ICANN, ICAN'T, IWON'T: uWHAT? How the internet is actually run A few weeks ago in Los Angeles, internet oversight body ICANN met for the 51st time – apparently in order to suck as much life as possible from 2,000 souls suffering a collective case of permanent, misplaced optimism. It was, as it always is, declared an enormous success, which is why you should ignore all the following …
"Why would the UK DVLA need to be represented at this meeting?"
I'd love to know the reason, it must be awfully important for a high-paid exec type to be excused work in order to fly out to LA. We count as 'the public', and we are interested, so I think that means we're entitled to find out what the reason is under the Freedom of Information Act. :)
All the key gTLDs need to do is declare UDI and set up a new directorate.
They'd need to "steal" the .com and other non gTLD databases. But ICANN has "stolen" the new TLDs for itself anyway.
Personally, I think it is time for the balkanisation of DNS anyway. The whole system is corrupt and abused. From here-today-gone-tomorrow fraudulent domains, through to the ransoming of domain names and domain squatters.
Funny how a glorified DNS operator managed to turn into a bloated bureaucracy in such a short time. I was confused to why they needed such a huge pile of money and now I know: ridiculously expensive meetings in hotels around the world and bullshit jobs with extravagant paychecks.
Why the fuck do they need to meet in person anyway? What's wrong with doing video conferencing? Oh right, then they can't waste as much of our money.
As I'm one of the people who appointed Cowley at Nominet and thus started her megalomanic career, I have put in an FoI request asking for more information about her trip. At least it might make them think twice in future, though I doubt it.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/attendance_of_chair_lesley_cowle_2/new
Ta,
Ivan
Response from DVLA:
We presume your request arises from the original online article from The Register on
4 November 2014. If you now follow the link you provided, you will see the statement
suggesting that Lesley Cowley was representing DVLA has been removed.
Lesley Cowley did not attend the meeting in her capacity as DVLA Chair and
consequently, the Agency did not contribute to the cost of her attendance. There are
no current plans for the DVLA Chair to attend any other international meetings in that
capacity.
We're going from having the internet run by an organization that had a self serving agenda, and only payed enough lip service to being "open" to keep outright revolt from happening, to another organization that has a self serving agenda, and is only paying enough lip service to being "open" to keep outright revolt from happening.
The saddest thing is, the previous organization had an agenda that was intended to potentially benefit millions (their own country), and the new one really only cares about a few hundred at best. Seems like we're going from most of us being buggered to all of us being buggered.
Bless.
I may have just been there for a few months but from the inside the problems with icann are obvious in light of this article. Its management culture is an immature, top-down, command and control structure instead of the bottom-up, multistakeholder one icann espouses and much larger organizations have embraced long ago.
The steady decline of icann transparency over recent years is a direct result of this ancient top-down management approach.
icann has created this structure by systematically hiring friends of gdd pres (left over from last ceo) into upper layers of management, who have no internet or international governance organization qualifications or experience with the community icann serves. this has surrounded the ceo and board with top-down echo chamber paranoia and fear (them versus us) instead of the cordial , bottom-up approach, and familiarirty community members in these positions would bring.
staff is rarely consulted and if consulted most are too inexperienced and afraid of losing their jobs - by hiring design - to respond critically...and what I saw, they rarely ask the few community centric old timers and then do not heed their advice. this is too bad.
although it appears some independent thinkers are being brought into upper layers, until there is more house cleaning at the vp and higher layers (including IANA vp) - replacing them with independent experienced players and have some time for icann to actually experience and learn from the bottom-up experience themselves, icann is not ready for the iana transistion.
all the tld problems and recent self anointing coordination leadership are results of this close minded , old management style.
before icann can go it alone, it must gut the cronyism based upper management and practice bottom-up multi-stakeholder management internally first to appreciate it.
replace them with seasoned community members - not friends and relatives with no experience in DNS.
Also if they believe in the bottom-up process so much, a whistle blower protection policy would demonstrate that.
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