Hi Olivier,
Sorry, but I will call shenanigans on that assertion.
Deeds speak.
That the ICANN Board not only needed to deliberate at length, but had to be "nudged" by the California Attorney-General to make the right decision on the ,ORG debacle tells even a casual outsider all they need to know about the ongoing attitude of ICANN towards the public interest.
ICANN refused its own consultants' recommendations to have a second Board member recommended by the At-Large Community because we didn't grovel sufficiently. And don't even get me started on that pathetic joke on the world known as ICANN's "empowered community". That At-Large validated that laughable monster rather than fight it at every step is reason alone to bestow "hood ornament" status. As a result, as those outside the ICANN cult-bubble have plainly seen, without the California AG ICANN has no real public accountability at all.
Apparently one must be periodically reminded that, no matter where they came from, ICANN Board members are commanded upon arrival that their fiduciary duty is to ICANN-the-institution and not stakeholders or the public interest. Or to also be reminded that the GNSO compact of domain buyers and sellers has the power to compel the Board to act on high-level policy, whereas At-Large remains encouraged to engage in bikeshedding of the highest order. Unless those two rather horrible unique corporate artifacts have changed, please don't lecture on how ICANN may be gentler to the public interest simply because we recognize some of the people on the Board.
- Evan