[bc-gnso] FW: ICANN's "Sense of Entitlement"

[Phil Corwin <psc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI, for what it's worth...





http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120312/12074118080/icanns-sense-entitlement-takes-over-shocked-it-lost-its-bid-to-retain-iana.shtml

ICANN's Sense Of Entitlement Takes Over; Shocked It Lost Its Bid To Retain IANA
from the oops dept

Via Lauren 
Weinstein<https://plus.google.com/u/0/114753028665775786510/posts/7njaU3xhWXE>, 
we find out that ICANN has effectively lost its bid to retain control over IANA 
functions<http://news.dot-nxt.com/2012/03/10/icann-no-idea-icann-rejection>, 
though the fact that everyone else sucks too means it gets to hang on for at 
least six more months. In the meantime, though, it appears the whole thing took 
an always out-of-touch ICANN by surprise:

In a worrying turn of events, it appears that ICANN had no idea about the 
rejection of its bid for long-term running of the IANA contract prior to an 
announcement being posted on the NTIA's website today.

The organization - which has run the IANA functions for over a decade - is also 
waiting to hear why the US government feels it has failed to meet the RFP 
criteria that defined a new, more open approach to the contract.

In a series of sudden and unexpected announcements earlier today, the NTIA 
first announced<http://news.dot-nxt.com/2012/03/10/iana-rfp-cancelled> it was 
canceling the entire rebid process for IANA, then that it was canceling it 
because no one had met its criteria, and then that it was 
extending<http://news.dot-nxt.com/2012/03/10/ntia-iana-update> ICANN's IANA 
contract for six months to give it time to re-run the RFP process.

IANA is the part that manages the authoritative root servers and important 
things like IP address allocations. ICANN has run that (along with its core 
functionality of overseeing DNS) basically since all of this was set up when 
lots of people realized that perhaps relying on one 
guy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel> (as brilliant as he was) to manage 
the entire internet wasn't the best solution. The fact that ICANN didn't breeze 
through the IANA RFP is an interesting result, and as Lauren Weinstein notes, 
it's as if ICANN has taken on quite an entitlement viewpoint:

In my view, ICANN's behavior of late regarding the NTIA has been something like 
the Wall Street firms vs. their ersatz regulators -- a sense of entitlement and 
"we're too important to be replaced" plowing forward with the domain-industrial 
complex's "get rich quick" agenda, with only lip-service being paid to NTIA. As 
I said earlier today, I would expect ICANN to find a way to come into 
"technical" compliance for now. But I still also feel very strongly that we 
need a purpose-built replacement for ICANN that will not carry its ever 
increasing political and "domainer" baggage. Not the UN. Not the ITU. But a new 
international forum that cares about all the Internet's users, not mainly the 
monied domain exploitation interests at the top of the DNS food chain.

If only there were real efforts being made to move in that direction...







Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal

Virtualaw LLC

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"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey