WHY ICANN CAN'T

The IEEE is a non-profit, technical professional association of more than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries. The full name is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Through its members, the IEEE is a leading authority in technical areas ranging from computer engineering, biomedical technology and telecommunications, to electric power, aerospace and consumer electronics, among others. The IEEE produces 30 percent of the world's published literature in electrical engineering, computers and control technology, holds annually more than 300 major conferences and has more than 860 active standards with 700 under development.

With that in mind, an editorial in today's issue says, "ICANN is floundering. Last April, computer industry observer Esther Dyson—a former chair of ICANN's board—called it "a real cesspool." Most disturbingly, for example, ICANN recently abandoned its pledge to create a membership structure to elect its powerful, 18-member board of directors.

Yet "ICANN's contracts with the Department of Commerce give it regulatory authority similar to that of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which few people would argue is a purely technical body. ICANN puts price caps on the cost of registering a domain name, and controls the supply of those names by accepting or rejecting applications for top-level domains (.com, .net, and the like). It imposes technical standards on the domain-name registration industry, for example, for methods of sharing access to registration databases. It fosters and limits certain kinds of competition, by, for example, determining which companies get certain kinds of business—such as those involving the registering of names. It also decides which businesses must divest themselves of existing enterprises. It strengthens or weakens the scope of intellectual property rights by setting up the rules by which officials must resolve trademark conflicts over domain names. It routinely affects consumers of domain name registration services, by deciding which companies to accredit to register names and interact with consumers. Finally, it can even strengthen or undermine personal privacy rights: it determines what information about domain-name holders is released for all to see on the Internet."

Read this eye-opening editorial in its entirety here.

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