[governance] FW: [IP] John Gilmore on ICANN.

[Milton L Mueller]

Dave:

I believe this is not an inaccurate description from a historical standpoint.

There are quite a few inaccuracies, although I share Gilmore’s fundamental perspective that ICANN uses its monopoly on the root to tax and regulate DNS suppliers and users.

Gilmore seems oblivious to a more fundamental fact, however: the US oversight role is NOT some improvement or check on these actions of ICANN’s that he complains about, but are part and parcel of it. The USG has been complicit in everything that ICANN has done and often emphasizes the worst aspects of it.

For example:
Back when ICANN was formed in 1998, EFF proposed that ICANN's
"nonprofit" corporate charter should include some basic protections
for freedom of speech and press, due process, international human
rights, transparency, and such.  See:
[snip]
ICANN's management and lawyers refused to include any such provisions,

Whoa, pardner. It wasn’t ICANN’s management and lawyers who decided this, it was NTIA. Many of us urged the Commerce Department to require them to include free speech protections, and the Commerce Department flatly refused. They are the Commerce Department, not the human rights department, after all.
This is what makes the claim that US oversight of ICANN is a great protector of free speech so ironic.
ICANN soon started charging domain registrars a fee of 20c per year
per domain, for doing nothing except protecting itself from outsiders
and paying itself large wages.  ICANN sets the amount of this fee
itself, and there is nothing that outsiders, or ICANN's customers, can
do to challenge it or change it.  It is currently 18c per transaction,
and raises about $80 million dollars per year, all of which ICANN
finds some way to spend on itself and its lawyers.  By 2014 it had

Again, this was done with the approval, if not the insistence of the USG. The USG, responding to the demands of trademark holders, wanted a regulatory agency to police cybersquatting. All regulators need funding to sustain their activities, and they survive on the basis of taxes. ICANN is no exception. It’s financial viability was very shaky until it started doing this.

At one point a single outside critic, Karl Auerbach, slipped onto the
ICANN Board of Directors.
No, he didn’t “slip in” he was elected – in an election I believe Gilmore urged everyone to boycott or ignore.
But EFF does deserve kudos for backing Auerbach’s lawsuit!

One minor drag on ICANN's ability to do exactly what it wants has been
the original US Government contract to run the domain name system.
Whenever ICANN got a little too crazy, the government would gently
suggest that perhaps it would re-bid that contract to somebody a
little less crazy.

Oh, what a fantasy. NTIA and ICANN have a collusive relationship. When you talk about “light touch” go back and look at the .xxx incident or at the US-led Governmental Advisory Committee’s role in forcing a top-down regulatory structure on registrars and registries.
It’s ok to be anti-ICANN but you’ve got to be realistic about where a lot of its power is coming from.
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