Talk:ICANN

ICANN privatization

Meanwhile, ICANN is seeking to privatize itself, withdrawing from its connections to the US Government and the US Department of Commerce. -- considering this, I keep wondering how, in lieu of this morning's news (see Slashdot), just how the United Nations would plan on taking over this organization and its tasks if the ITU gets what it wants. --69.234.232.55 04:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Article name

Is there any reason not to move this to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers? Most of the other related bodies IETF, IESG, IANA, etc are all at their full names. Noel (talk) 16:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Why not? I can't find any one or argument that favors the abbreviated name. True, we have heard of ICANN but also never heard of the long name, but in wikipedia I think we use an official name, right? -- Taku 22:58, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) for what we do in Wikipedia. Uncle G 09:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Mmmm. Good point. I guess ICANN is probably better known as "ICANN", but then I suppose one could say the same about the others. Oh well, I'm just gonna throw up my hands, and let someone else chose! :-) Noel (talk) 23:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no move Ardenn 17:15, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Requested Move

There was an improperly formatted requested move on WP:RM from the current article state (ICANN) to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

with the comment

as its the full name of the org it should be used. Currently orl redirect prevents move change by users.

Completing request here - please give your opinions below. WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 17:55, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support. The official name is the right one for the article title. --Coolcaesar 18:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose Wikipedia naming conventions say the most commonly used name should be used, and that's definitely ICANN. See CNN, BBC and so forth. There's absolutely no logical reason to spellt he whole thing out. The official body uses ICANN in its own correspondence. DreamGuy 22:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, for the reasons DreamGuy has already given. ICANN is usually called ICANN, and refers to itself as ICANN most of the time. --Zundark 11:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support for consistency with IETF, IANA, IAB, IESG and so on --Alvestrand 21:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

NPOV regarding ICANN/WIPO politics

The second half of the section "Arguments about ICANN" contains useful information and ought not, I think, be deleted. Still, it requires significant cleanup to conform to NPOV. Note especially the reference to UDRP as "hideous", the unsubstantiated claim that "many experts" believe ICANN is a "corrupt monopoly", and the direct propounding of questionably relevant free-market principles in the last paragraph. -- 71.198.187.155 23:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I tried for a cleanup. The anger shown by the anti-ICANN activists is worth describing, but it's not the whole story. --Alvestrand 05:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparently 65.116.201.98 (talk · contribs) didn't like my version - [1] - but Tim Starling (talk · contribs) did - [2]. I hope 65 is willing to take it to the talk page. --Alvestrand 05:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

24.148.29.239 (talk · contribs) is apparently of the same opinion as 65, and as untalkative. [3]. The original section was inserted by 68.60.152.232 (talk · contribs) on June 1 [4]; it seems likely to be one user with an unstable IP address. --Alvestrand 08:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. Still no argument for the edits in response to User talk:65.116.201.98, who keeps on reverting. Suggestions for a next step? --Alvestrand 22:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

There are no more arguments to be made, dude. ICANN is a corrupt monopoly and anyone who keeps deleting the truths that have been posted in the "arguments" section is either a paid lackey for ICANN or has a vested interest in the monopoly. The information posted is FACTUAL and not a POV, therefore such a warning doesnt belong. These are FACTS, not opinions. JusticeForICANNsVictims 21:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine. Prove it. You should be able to dig up citations to at least a couple of high-quality sources on LexisNexis or Infotrac or ProQuest if your "facts" are so ubiquitous. Please see core Wikipedia policies at WP:NPOV and WP:V. For an example of a properly sourced Wikipedia article, see Lawyer. --Coolcaesar 21:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Proof - do I need to prove that the sun will rise every day or that gravity exists. These are ubiquitous facts - everyone knows them. Only synchophants, lackeys and people with a vested interest in ICANN would not see this. You want a fact: How about the theft of .BIZ from AtlanticRoot (Leah Gallegos)? That business property was already in use and ICANN stole it on purpose to create namespace instability. DIS-prove that one! JusticeForICANNsVictims 04:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Your argument is what's called a proof surrogate, not proof, you twit. You're inferring evil intent on the part of ICANN when you have no internal memoranda or transcripts or other smoking guns that would show such an intent. Acts standing alone are never enough for intent especially when ICANN has many legitimate explanations such as acting to protect the stability of the Internet. Please bring your editing contributions into compliance with the following policies (and you need to click on these links and READ THEM): WP:NPOV; WP:V; WP:NOT. Or else you will be banned by the admins.--Coolcaesar 05:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I just remembered what you remind me of. To make it painfully clear, WP:NOT states that Wikipedia is not a soapbox. You cannot post your conspiracy theory about ICANN on Wikipedia until it is published in a verifiable publication somewhere else. If the New York Times were to run a front-page article tomorrow on ICANN being evil and having an ulterior motive of destroying alternate roots to ensure profit for Verisign, then your crazy conspiracy theories could be posted in the article. --Coolcaesar 06:14, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Genesis 1:28+1/3 And God said, "Let there be ICANN"; and there was ICANN. 28+2/3 And God saw that it was kind of lol-worthy, from a certain point of view. 70.49.147.139 (talk) 19:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

WRT Leah Gallegos and .biz - it's not clear that the property ICANN assigned was related in any way to what Leah Gallegos was selling. The Gallegos .biz was only one of multiple claimants among the "alternate root" crowd - I see no logic under which ICANN could have acknowledged any of those claims as valid. And so far, it seems that nobody's even tried to challenge that judgment call. --Alvestrand 19:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

ICANN Internationalized

An article published by TheRegister (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/27/ntia_icann_meeting/) (referenced by a slashdot entry today) claims that ICANN has been internationalized. According to Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060727-7366.html) at 17:21 GMT, this is inaccurate. US control should continue for at least a year according to Ars Technica. Perhaps someone more wikipedia-knowledgeable than I am should add a comment clarifying this (such as "Contrary to some reports, control of ICANN has not been internationalized[1]->arstechnica.") --Whiteknox 17:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's a single definition of "internationalized" that makes such a statement make sense. The US DoC insists on having a certain control over ICANN's actions through its "contract" - but ICANN's internal processes don't give the US any special role. So it's not easily described as "internationalized" or "not internationalized", I think. --Alvestrand 18:55, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

It would be important to define internationalized as the word in itself is ambiguous; For your information most of the current people assigned to the Board of Directors for ICANN are not american but truly an international panel. The EU as well as the US are far from having come up with any logical alternative to the current situation. --Creationist Phil 15:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Many US companies have non-American on the board, but that does not mean they are not American. Many models exist for the internationalisation of ICAAN's operations, which the US DoC has oversight. These models are such organisations as the International Telecommunications Union or the IEEE. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.56.71.55 (talk) 22:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

Internet democracy

Re the statement: "However, the attempts that ICANN made to set up an organizational structure that would allow wide input from the global Internet community did not work well;" -- this just doesn't ring true. I recall there was a claim from some official in ICANN in this respect, but it seemed to be actually in response to some in the ICANN board not wanting to deal with any actual democratic control of their decision making. They seemed to translate an election mechanism they designed not working out into there being no possibility of such a mechanism working (in other words, they inexplicably gave up). Hopefully, we can eventually improve this part of the article. —  Stevie is the man!  ^{Talk • Work} 16:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's relatively clear that the mechanism they designed did not work out, and that they gave up on "direct democracy" - I don't know that we can conclude that this was either justified or unjustified. There's still the ongoing "at large community" effort - more or less ICANN saying "if you can figure out a way to do this that makes sense, we will support it". So far, there's been no effective self-organization that I know of. --Alvestrand 19:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

WARNING: INTERESTED PARTY - The issue of voting is something that I struggle with a great deal. One of the problems when having such a broad multi-stakeholder process is that the diversity and lack of borders makes it very difficult to set up a fair vote. Theortically EVERYONE in the world is a stakeholder, but giving everyone in the world to vote would be impossible. During an election many years ago, the some Japanese Internet community people urged companies to tell their employees to vote for the Japanese candidate. Other countries did just open web sites. Was it "fair" for the Japanese companies to ask their employees to vote? In Japan, corporate voting blocks are a "normal" part of the democracy. In some countries it sounds very weird.

My personal view is that voice is more important than votes. When everyone is in the room and we have the "open mic" anyone can come and make their statements. They can address the board or anyone in the room. The public dialog has more influence on people's opinions than anything that I know of. (Although I follow up by trying to track down sources and doing my own research.)

I strongly believe that we have a balanced board that represents a variety of background and people who vote based on the information available and the public dialog. I think that ICANN should be viewed more as a custodian of a consensus process of people who have interests and opinions and NOT a democracy with elected representatives. The board should serve to try to manage the consensus process and vote objectively and not as a representative of a particular interest.

This is my personal view. --Joi 07:22, 20 September 2006 (UTC) ICANN Board Member

Weasel Words

I've tried valiantly to remove some of the weasel words in this article but it's really difficult, the entire section about alternatives to ICANN was it's own article at one point which I successfully lobbied to have merged here but it still exists solely as independent research and opinion. I've tried to change "some claim" with X's website as a reference to "X claims" with X's website as a reference but it's an ongoing effort. Elomis 02:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe that I successfully removed the weasel words from the "Arguments Section"Wolface (talk) 00:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Internationalization

I am removing this section as it currently stands as it is plainly out-of-date. I archive it below for reference.

===Internationalization===

It has been suggested publicly that ICANN should internationalize, in that it should be seen as an international public organization and should remove historical contractual links to the U.S. Government and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

To counteract this argument, supporters note that of the 15 voting members of the ICANN Board of Directors, it currently has board members from six continents, and has only four US Directors:

• ICANN Chairman, Vint Cerf, a noted "Father of the Internet" who was appointed by ICANN's Nominating Committee;
• Rita Rodin, a New York attorney who was appointed by ICANN's Generic Name Supporting Organization or GNSO in 2006;
• Steven N. Goldstein, who retired from the National Science Foundation in 2003, was selected by the 2006 Nominating Committee to serve as a Board Member.
• Susan Crawford, Associate Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School in New York City, was appointed to the Board by the Nominating Committee in 2005.

The authority that the U.S. Government holds via contracts with ICANN and Commerce stems from the historical role of the United States in creating the Internet. Support from National Top Level Domain Internet registries has improved drastically in 2006.

Wwwhatsup (talk) 08:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

ICANN requests independence

I'm not sure how to work in [this bit of news], about ICANN's administrators saying they have met the requirements set by the US government to become independent of government control. I will leave that for editors with more experience on this article. TechBear (talk) 14:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Crime gets a free ride from ICANN

Yesterday I reported 832 spams to SpamCop and Knujon. For the past 90 days I've been conducting a casual survey of all that spam (several megabytes a day) to try and determine who is sending what. I don't check all the links -- it would be a full-time job. I check those crooks using Google, Geocities or Blogspot redirect pages, as well as any others who are obviously trying to mask the spamvertised entity.

Herbal remedies and Canadian Pharmacy head the scum list with an average 25% of all spam received. But the interesting point is they seldom use the same spamvertised domain in the same 24-hour barrage. In one day's spam the Herbal rememdies crime cartel had 127 ads. They used 67 different domains. As time goes on, they maintain that kind of average -- but the domain names change. This is a clear indication that they are utilizing an ICANN policy known as "domain tasting" -- or more accurately put: domain kiting.

Here's how it works: Unscrupulous rogue registrars utilize a robot to register hundreds or thousands of domains -- but they don't pay for them. Their robots automatically deploy spam, phishing, identity theft or virus pages on the web, and then begin sending millions of spams directing victims to those pages. At the end of the ICANN "tasting" period of five days, the robots DROP the domains. Moments later, they register them again and the cycle starts all over. Most often they end up with many different domains.

Did you ever buy a domain without paying for it?

This is a sophisticated, supposedly legal version of domain squatting, which has been going on since the Clinton administration deregulated domains. And when you open something as important as domains to a band of unrelated, unregulated internationals along with any jackleg-out-to-make-a-buck on earth, you're just inviting criminal exploitation.

All domains acquired should be paid for immediately at the point of registration. PERIOD. Rogue registrars should NOT be allowed to "taste" (aka "kite") thousands of domains and then release them only to pick them back up again moments later.

If ICANN wants to offer "grace" or "tasting" period, then the purchaser should be required to request and then obtain a refund. Ideally, via the postal service in WRITING to provide a court admissable paper trail with real, valid signatures.

This would weed out the criminal "tasters."

The side benefit to ICANN would be, in effect, a 'loan' to ICANN of the use of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the period of time between registration and refund -- which could amount to a considerable piece of interest.

At that point ALL domain tasting would probably grind to a dead stop -- because the only people "tasting" (kiting) domains are criminals who would never otherwise purchase the domains -- interested only in exploiting and profiteering off the system.

Let anyone who wants a domain -- for testing or otherwise -- PAY FOR IT. Period. If they don't like it or don't use it, then get a refund like the rest of us do.

Then the world (particularly the search engines and those who use them) would be a much better off.

At any rate, this is just one more indication that ICANN should be dissolved and a new, accountable entity put in charge of the domain system.

THE BEST SOLUTION OF ALL

would be for ALL domains to be permanently registered once and ONLY once. If registration lapses, then the domain is DEAD. They would NEVER be released back for reuse -- they would simply cease to exist. This would solve a number of problems now troubling the internet. After a while there would be only legitimate domains in legitimate use. And there would be far fewer domains. Honorable intentions would prevail.

End of story.

Fred Showker, Editor: DTG Magazine

74.194.81.237 (talk) 20:36, 20 April 2008