(Sorry for the delay in posting this. Technical troubles…)
At the ICANN meeting in in Yokohama, the board has voted to create new top level domains. More in this report.
But the voting raises a question: Whose Internet will it be, anyway?
The question wasn’t on the agenda when the ICANN board met. But this small organization, the administrator of the Internet’s domain-name addressing system, is fundamentally in the business of deciding whose Internet it will be.
And so, if you care, are you.
ICANN did some of the right things this weekend. But the early history of the organization was of autocracy, not openness.
ICANN’s board lowered one hurdle — the number of votes it takes to get public nominations to the board — but created another, the $50,000 fee for even looking at a proposal for a new top-level domain. The latter will discourage some good ideas in this first round, unfortunately.
You need to to participate in the board of directors voting process before the board decides to turn it off entirely. Keep in mind that the board is about to launch on a study of the process by which the directors are chosen. Public elections could well disapppear.
Keep up the pressure, folks. The stakes are simple — deciding whose Internet it will be.