On 6 September 2016 at 00:14, Dharma Dailey <dharma.dailey@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sep 5, 2016, at 2:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:

I think the main issue of accountability stems from a fundamental lack of public understanding on "accountable to whom? and how to assert this?"

I don’t want to sound overly harsh because I greatly respect those of you who have diligently worked on behalf of users within the ICANN process for so long. But I would argue the opposite is also true.

Hi Dharma,

You're not being harsh at all, and I appreciate the response.

The same details you state below also support a view that on the whole the ICANN + registration industry has a lack of clarity about who registrants are (or could be).

From my personal perspective, there is a prevailing view in the domain industry that every human on earth -- and every organizations of more than two people -- are simply potential domain buyers who haven't yet been sold. It's that worldview that drives the massive expansion of gTLDs, and the massive domaining industry of name speculators hoping to guess what domain you want before you want it (so they can buy it first and extort from you later).

I would disagree that the small business market is not a specific target of the domain industry, but I would agree that the domain industry has yet to come up with a simple compelling message versus alternatives such as Facebook *and* they have yet to address the many obstacles uniquely faced by this segment.

In the US where the VAST majority of businesses are sole proprietor or under 25 employees— arguably each one a potential registrant— a large portion of these are now likely better served by creating a Facebook Page than a website.

I absolutely agree. In fact, if you look earlier in this thread you'll see how I mention that ICANN refuses to see how things like Facebook pages and URL shorteners are perceived out in the world as viable alternatives to obtaining "memorable" domain names. ICANN's perception of "competition" and "choice" appears limited to cheering the availability of multiple different TLDs through multiple different registrars. Within the community, only ALAC is trying to push the boundaries of that short-sightedness.

It's not all ICANN's fault. There are many examples, for instance of small businesses held hostage by domain hosting operators that offer "free" domain names that are owned by the hosting service rather than the customer. ICANN cannot fix these problems by itself but it can play a role in plain language explanations of what "owning" a domain name means and what are the rights and obligations of a domain name owner. So far ICANN has refused to take on this role as educator beyond anything purely within the scope of what it oversees. As a result there is a huge deficiency in big-picture public awareness of the benefits and pitfalls. And so people turn to Facebook and other alternatives because of the simplicity.

Cheers,

- Evan

Compared to registering your own domain etc, Facebook fills a niche largely by addressing head on a number of issues that time and again get discussed at ICANN but simply have not been addressed as satisfactorily: namely security, simplicity, and cost. Yes, there are many great people raising concerns on behalf of that segment of registrants— and certainly their have been improvements achieved through those efforts— but the proof is in the pudding. That segment of registrants are just not a consistent and marked pre-occupation for all parties— as they would need to be to really get breakthrough solutions in place.

Dharma Dailey