[At-Large] ICANN PREGUNTAS

[Karl Auerbach]

Bret Fausett wrote:
>> Yet for some reason, ICANN management won't agree to fully fund the travel
>> expenses of ICANN volunteers.  Gosh, they might have to spend another
>> $175,000 if they fully funded the GNSO Councilors.
> 
> I think ICANN is way too large...in just about everything: budget, size of
> staff, mission and ambition. I would rather see us start to scale ICANN
> back than use the bloat as justification for funding everything that is
> currently unfunded.

I agree.  I have particular concern for the reasons expressed in my part 
of the ALAC review report - that there is no mechanism through which 
ICANN may be held accountable by the community of internet users for 
whose benefit ICANN was created and for which it receives immunity from 
taxation and other privileges.

Recently, in conjunction with the conflicker worm we have learned that 
ICANN has decided to expand into new territory and become an internet 
police officer, enforcing its own notion of what should be done to shut 
down an internet virus.  What, exactly, ICANN is doing is unknown.  And 
there is no sign that this was done in accord with any known ICANN 
policy or under what constraints, if any.

ICANN, through its imposition of arbitrary and unsubstantiated registry 
fees on name registrations is taxing the internet community at a rate 
that is probably on the order of a billion US dollars ($1,000,000,000 
USD) every year.

ICANN carries the power of life and death over registry businesses that 
are completely lawful - a power that has been exercised mainly on the 
"death" side of the balance and often as an apparent protection of 
ICANN's incumbent registries and intellectual property "stakeholders".

The other week I was looking at some elephant seals on a nearby beach - 
enormous creatures - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOATFGBS7G0 - They 
remind me of ICANN.

ICANN's board, because of the nominating committee process and dilution 
by "liasons", is composed of worthies who seem more interested in being 
Mr. Nice Guy than advocates for an accountable, responsible, streamlined 
ICANN.

I was amazed at ICANN's form 990 - it took 136 pages of self 
congratulatory (and probably rather expensive to create) fluff to convey 
what should have been said in a 5 page form.  Indeed, it is not clear 
that there actually is the content required of a form 990 inside that 
huge thing that ICANN published.

ICANN has sprouted excrescences, such as its vacuous "Ombudsman", that 
are expensive and useless and that should be cut away.

If we count up all the money that ICANN pulls from the pockets of 
internet users - the registry fees, the ICANN per-domain tax, etc, we 
find that we are cumulatively paying more than a billion dollars a year 
for ICANN.  (Most of that billion goes to registries, only a 
$100,000,000 or so sticks, tax free, to ICANN itself.)  And in my 
opinion we are not getting anything near our money's worth.

ICANN needs to be placed on a severe diet.  But I do not see any force 
within ICANN that has the guts to do it.

		--karl--