Indeed Robin, very interesting organization.

I always tell friends and colleagues that with the size (in $$$) that the
domain names industry has became ($4-5B more or less?), it would be
extremely naive not to think that commercial interests will be lobbying
as hell, and even find the loopholes to cook deals under the table.

Many of them have a lot of "disposable income" to play with, for example
how much of its almost $1B in annual revenues is VeriSign willing to
invest to protect and growth its business.

Other constituencies don't have the economic resources to counter
effect the influence commercial constituents can buy.

I'd confess that even when I've been involved with the Internet for many
many years, I didn't pay much attention or participated in the discussions
about ICANN before. In 1998 when other colleagues started the process
and the ITAG was formed I thought the basic idea was to provide a better
institutional framework to the work Jon Postel and IANA have been doing
for many years.

Lack of time, interest, other responsibilities, kept me away from what
happened next and after many years when I started reading and taking a
closer at ICANN, I'll be honest, my first reaction was

 "What the Heck is This ?" (just to put it in nice words :-)

I do not consider myself an organizational/institutional expert, but besides
the legal framework or umbrella that California law provides for a
non-profit charitable blah blah corporation, there is a fundamental flaw
in the architecture of ICANN as an organization.

Without digging too much, one thing that keeps constantly floating in my
mind is the lack of "separation of powers".

I don't believe that having the same entity/structure doing policy development,
implementation, enforcement and review, will ever be bottom-up, transparent,
and fair. And as always use to joke (but it is a serious comment) the same
entity imposes and collect a tax directly or indirectly from every single
Internet user.

I just read a comment from @ICANN via twitter in response to the analysis
and comments posted by Anja Kovacs at the NCUC site, about the
Affirmation of Commitments
(http://ncdnhc.org/profiles/blogs/the-icannus-doc-affirmation-of).

@ICANN's comment said that Anja's main argument ignores the proposed
changes on the ICANN bylaws ...

Is the Kool-Aid still so strong at ICANN ?

Regards
Jorge

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Robin Gross <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> That's generally right, Jorge.  ICANN is not a true membership organization.
>  Interesting that as a nonproft organization, ICANN is not allowed to make
> any profit for its board members.  However, ICANN contracts are the only
> reason some businesses are in operation today.  So it is ironic that ICANN
> is not allowed to make money for its managers (board), but it is largely
> responsible for doling out giant contracts to other businesses so they can
> make a giant profit.   Thus ICANN is a nonprofit, that makes a lot of profit
> for a lot of people.  And this is why ICANN is crawling with lobbyists and
> attorneys for hire to get a policy advantage for a particular economic
> interest.
> Robin