by kierenmccarthy on January 13, 2012
I wrote an extensive review of the dot-jobs saga earlier this week on .Nxt called: The case study that could kill ICANN.
This afternoon, I saw the Stephane van Gelder had referenced it in a blog post: What ICANN is doing wrong.
I wrote a lengthy response to Stephane’s post, but for some reason it repeatedly could not get past his anti-spam mechanisms. Having spent a little bit of time writing a response, I figured I would post it here instead. It’s below:
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I think you’re being a little unfair to me. It is relatively easy to follow the article, even though the process itself was a little convoluted.
But anyway, this is the real problem: a very large number of people now know exactly what has happened and how bad it is. But what will happen? How will anyone be held to account? Will anyone even admit publicly that this is an example of poor governance?
Even if you were to raise it as GNSO Chair at the next ICANN meeting, you would likely be shouted down or told it is not in the GNSO’s remit, or be put under enormous peer pressure to keep it out of the public sphere. You’d probably be offered a private briefing. Anything to prevent the taboo being broken.
The best anyone can expect is that some Board members will dig into the issue.
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by kierenmccarthy on January 27, 2011
UPDATE: The ICANN Board just published the minutes from its meeting on Tuesday and intriguingly it has formally “triggered” the GAC-Board consultation that is explained in greater depth below.
That means the Board is prepared to say it disagrees with the GAC on 17 March and then, presumably, will approve the Applicant Guidebook at its formal Board meeting the next day.
On Tuesday I wrote a piece about the damaged decision-making process at ICANN at the moment. Right at the top I wrote:
Adding concern to the general vagueness is the inclusion of precise wording that means something specific, although no one is quite sure what. It is this:
“This meeting is not intended to address the requirements/steps outlined in the Bylaws mandated Board-GAC consultation process.”
This wording is indecipherable to any but the greatest of insiders. And that fact, combined with the reality that this Board-GAC meeting is one of the most significant Internet governance meetings in the past five years, makes it all the more frustrating.
Somewhat inevitably, people have emailed me saying “but aren’t you an insider? So what does it actually mean?” So, as briefly and as an coherently as I can manage here is my explanation for what this means. I am more than happy for people to disagree or add perspective in comments below; in fact, I’d encourage it. But anyway, here goes…
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Summary/analysis of dot-xxx issue
May 18, 2010I have spent the past week going through literally thousands of comments about whether there should be a new dot-xxx Internet extension for pornography. You won’t be surprised to hear it has brought out some strong feelings.
Anyway, the company behind the application, ICM Registry, hired me to write an objective summary of what was said. [...]