[governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

[Fahd A. Batayneh]

Way to go Karl, I admire your stance.

To be honest here, I am not very happy with some current board members of
ICANN as I feel that they are in to fill-out  numbers and show the world
the diversity ICANN possesses (I do not want to mention anyone in specific
here).

On the contrary, it is a pity when professional people devote their time to
a cause that is running against the waves.

Fahd

On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> On 09/02/2012 01:49 PM, Fahd A. Batayneh wrote:
>     Le 02/09/12 09:27, Roland Perry a écrit :
> >
> >         What's different about the ICANN system is that a lone voice can
> >         make a complaint which will be heard.
>
> > Maybe a good example would be the court case that was filed by an
> earlier ICANN board member to get access to    > documents that ICANN
> rejected to reveal to him.
>
> I am that board member.
>
> Have you ever tried to chop eucalyptus logs with an ax?  The wood is so
> rubbery that the blade just bounces off, leaving only a small notch: a lot
> of effort for little progress.
>
> ICANN is like a eucalyptus log.  If you want to affect it don't bring an
> ax; bring a chain saw.
>
> ICANN did not change much after my law suite prevailed.  In fact in some
> ways they changed their procedures to become even more secretive.  For
> instance their law firm changed their billing procedures so that rather
> than enumerating the specific items of work and charges for that work the
> monthly statements became a one-line statement of the total amount of money
> due for the month's work.  This was done, I believe, to prevent any future
> board member from evaluating the nature and quality of ICANN's massive
> outflows of money to the law firm that created ICANN.
>
> Attacks on me made by ICANN in their legal filings were, to my mind,
> personal, gratuitous, unprofessional, and, of course, unfounded.  A decade
> has passed and I can't remember whether we moved to exclude those on the
> grounds that ICANN's "evidence" was not relevant to the case at hand or
> whether we left it in as demonstrative of ICANN's way of
> reacting to those it considered hostile.
>
> Even after the court threw out ICANN's defenses and granted me nearly
> every thing that I had asked ICANN's press releases tried to characterize
> their utter defeat as if they had won a great victory.
>
> And I am still ostracized by many former ICANN board members for taking
> (and, of course, winning) that completely justified legal action.
>
> Many of the case materials are online:
>
> >
> https://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/DNS_control/ICANN_IANA_IAHC/Auerbach_v_ICANN/
>
> What surprised me the most was the degree to which ICANN was, and I
> believe remains, an entity that does not comprehend the role of its board
> of directors, both as a collective body and as individual members.
>
> The larger consideration is that ICANN has always had an institutional
> paranoia the engenders an automatic, visceral hostility to things that are
> not delivered wrapped with almost sycophantic deference.
>
>         --karl--
>
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