>I thought ICANN was supposed to be the good guys?
You could say that about every government, yet there's widespread corruption in most (or all) countries[1]. There's even corruption in democratic governments that are directly accountable to their citizens every few years (via elections). Given the way the ICANN board is appointed is... indirect at best, thinking that ICANN are the "good guys" is wishful thinking at best.
To be clear are you suggesting the private sector would do a better job managing this? After all, we're criticizing their transfer of the TLD to the private sector. They can't be both the hero and the villain in the same story can they? Surely I'm missing something?
At least the goal of the public sector is to serve the public whereas the goal of the private sector is to serve the interests of there shareholders.
If this was a private company on both sides wouldn't we just be hailing it as a big win for shareholders and/or demanding the government step in and intervene?
There are some people who think when it comes to DNS ICANN should basically be frozen - no new gTLDs, no wildcard DNS, no supporting domain name seizure, no price or policy changes, and so on. Just delegating to each TLD's providers, and maybe some policing of providers' behaviour.
If you believe that, hypothetically the best choice would be some sort of private nonprofit, independent of the government but bound to inaction by charter.
Whether being directly controlled by government would be an improvement is somewhat debatable - would lawmakers be reasonably hands-off, like they are with things like GPS and NIST time services? Or would the opportunity to block pornhub/piratebay/wikileaks prove irresistible?
You can read more at [1] - in short, critics of the new gTLDs would argue that:
1. It doesn't deliver the claimed increase the supply of domain names, as no-one would build a business or brand on whatever.info without securing whatever.com
2. It does shake down domain registrants for cash - if you already own whatever.com you'd better get whatever.info and whatever.sucks before someone else squats them.
3. These factors mean .info domains and suchlike are a stereotype of sketchy sites, which is a negative feedback loop.
> At least the goal of the public sector is to serve the public whereas the goal of the private sector is to serve the interests of there shareholders.
Goal, yes. In the abstract. Unfortunately, humans run everything. Most humans are decent and will try to uphold the public good. Some get into positions of control and decide they can profit off of it, so why not?
Society's constant struggle is to keep these greedy F*'s from screwing the rest of us. Just like freedom must be paid for, so must we constantly root out corruption and greed.
I fully agree that there are varying degrees of corruption in every government and organization, but using CPI to support this is kinda pointless because it measures perception of corruption, not actual corruption (much harder to measure). It stands to reason that even if there’s absolutely no corruption in a government, people who’re unhappy with living standards, resource allocations, etc. will still perceive corruption (and on the contrary, satisfied people may not perceive corruption where it exists).
> There's even corruption in democratic governments that are directly accountable to their citizens every few years (via elections).
Imagine if this kind of 'accountability' was applied to the rest of society. Oh, you robbed a bank? Well, you're banned from this branch for 4 years! Don't do it again!
You could say that about every government, yet there's widespread corruption in most (or all) countries[1]. There's even corruption in democratic governments that are directly accountable to their citizens every few years (via elections). Given the way the ICANN board is appointed is... indirect at best, thinking that ICANN are the "good guys" is wishful thinking at best.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index