TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION !!

The Center for Democracy and Technology has emphaticly call for ICANN elections, not selections, and the United States General Accounting Office detailed point by point ICANN's aberrant history and poor performance record. (See LIMITED PROGRESS ON PRIVATIZATION MAKES OUTCOME UNCERTAIN.)

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) was more blunt: "Although ICANN is supposed to be a consensus-based organization, the irony is that the only thing it has achieved global consensus on is that it is a failure."

ICANN's reaction?

Tax domain names to fund its operations -- and cease public elections.

Directors will now be chosen by an ICANN "nominating committee". And it wants this plan approved at its meeting in Bucharest, Romania next week.

("The [quarterly] meetings are free to attend, and open to any interested person." The last meeting was in Accra, Ghana. The next will be in Shanghai, China. Contact your travel agent today.)

Today ICANN said, "We commend this Blueprint for Action to the ICANN Board and recommend that it be acted on in Bucharest. We also recommend that the Board appoint a Transition Team to work through the many details of implementation between now and ICANN's annual meeting in Shanghai. It is time to close this debate. ICANN must now move forward with dispatch."

ICANN's activities are, by design, distant and arcane -- so what's it to you, right?

Wrong.

Control of the root is being leveraged to control the Internet itself in such key areas as trademark and copyright protection, surveillance of users, content regulation, and regulation of the domain name supply industry. (See Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace by Milton Mueller.)

The Commerce Department, which oversees ICANN, plans to decide in September whether to renew the agreement under which ICANN manages the domain-name system.

"Barring significant changes, we'll have to look at alternatives to ICANN," said Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, last week (see ICANN, Dotted With Doubts).

If you don't want taxation without representation on the internet, perhaps you should take the time, now, to contact your *elected* representatives in Washington D.C.

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