[ga] What is ICANN?

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Tue, Nov 07, 2000 at 10:43:44AM -0800, Patrick Greenwell wrote:
>  
> > 2) we have a perfectly adequate procedure for selecting a chair.
> > moreover, if one examines the endorsements for board candidates, one
> > notes a disturbing pattern of *large* numbers of people who have never
> > participated in the DNSO in any way suddenly turning up to endorse
> > candidates (for example, Jamie Love had well over 100 endorsements,
> > most of who had never in any aspect of ICANN previously).   While this
> > might be satisfying to supporters of Jamie Love, it illustrates
> > perfectly that an election by the GA is terribly susceptible to
> > capture.
> 
> We have thousands of people in the U.S. going to the polls today that have
> never actively participated in the U.S. government previously.
> 
> It's called democracy Kent(well strictly speaking we operate in a
> republic.)
> 
> Get used to it.

However, ICANN is not, and cannot be, a democracy.  You might as well
get used to that.

Instead, ICANN is a small non-profit CORPORATION.  It renders certain
Internet services on a cost-recovery basis (but still FOR MONEY), to
certain entities.  You could think of it as similar to one of the
Internet Exchange companies.  (It is a non-profit to ameliorate concerns
about anti-trust).  The entities to which ICANN markets its services are
not "the people" -- the entities are other corporations, standards
bodies, and so on.  The services in question are coordination of certain
activities, acting as a central clearing house for number assignments
and name assignments, management of the root zone (a glop of information
shared among many of the the corporations for which ICANN provides
service), managing a process by which names can be added to the root
zone, etc. 

This coordination is a valuable service to these entities -- without it
they certainly face heavy government regulation. (Of course, they may 
face such regulation anyway, but ICANN at least gives the hope of industry 
self-regulation.)

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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