This is not the first time that the ICANN community has tried to create a mechanism that would stop the board from being the ultimate decider of everything. It’s not even the second time. It will be the third time that there has been a formal recommendation that ICANN’s board be subject to oversight. And so far, it is determined not to budge.

When we asked ICANN’s CEO, Fadi Chehade, point-blank whether ICANN was opposed to an oversight mechanism, he told us that he couldn’t respond until there was a further formal recommendation. “Let’s let the community speak,” he urged, before saying that to be considered, the idea “would require complete consensus and more extended dialogue.”

ICANN’s chairman, Steve Crocker, was more forthcoming but was clearly opposed to the idea. He has been on the ICANN board for 12 years and so seen repeated efforts to make the board accountable beyond itself.

“This could be a slippery slope,” he told us. “I know that it doesn’t feel right that the board reviews its own decisions but the harder part is: what do you do? We have all been raised to believe in the separation of powers and legislation versus judicial, but the role of the judiciary is not to reverse or supersede decisions. The primary force is whether the community at large feels it has had a fair hearing.”