In turn, not disagreeing with that analysis. 

The money ICANN spends on sandbagging ALAC and other groupings at ICANN in order to provide it with the window-dressing of consensus-based decision-making is, at least, some money *not* being spent on expensive staff offices, travel, and dinners. Worthy people get some assistance to travel the world, to inform themselves about interesting issues, and to meet like-minded people. As such it is a net positive. 

However, as NARALO members have obviously discovered, to judge by their leisurely communications, the stakes are very low, in that really nothing ALAC says will be given much heed by ICANN staff. So enjoy the travel! 

The state that ICANN finds itself in is due to its relative irrelevance to the internet, which you point out, coupled with a flawed governance structure.

I don’t mean to shock anyone, but the multi-stakeholder governance model that everyone prays to has some serious issues, which are on full display at ICANN. 

First and foremost, deciding who is and who is not a stakeholder, and deciding who goes in what group, is the whole game. The government of Hong Kong prior to the Chinese takeover. It had constituencies, they each had a vote, but some consisted of 12 rich members and some of many many thousands of poor ones. The same groups that were there at the beginning of ICANN, way back in the Clinton administration, are there today. The internet is unrecognizably different, but ICANN looks the same. 

Second, it is a system highly prone to capture by the groups that care the most and have the most resources. Those who have less skin in the game bow out before the furious passion of those who have something to lose. In ICANN’s case, these are governments, IP interests, and VeriSign. If you doubt this, ask yourself why all the board members are and have for some time now been indistinguishable not only from each other, but from grandees sitting on telecom advisory bodies all over the world. 

Third, with power by design being held by different groups, the vacuum in the middle has been filled by a massive ICANN staff and budget that naturally wishes to perpetuate itself. John Jeffrey has built an empire with VeriSign’s cash. Anything that is in the Internet’s interest, but not in the interests of the ICANN staff, has no chance. 

All of these are symptoms of the overarching problem with multi-stakeholder governance, which is that it is undemocratic. Extremely so. I have titled at NARALO’s own structure, which I won’t do again, but suffice it to say that there is no way for an individual user of the Internet to participate in a vote for anything without have first been approved by the gatekeepers of one of the ICANN groups. Quite apart from any feelings about democracy as a system, the myriad of barriers erected by those within against effective outside participation, even as it proclaims openness, have left ICANN with two distinguishing features: irrelevance, and a pile of cash. This is not a recipe for longevity.

Multi-stakeholder governance has come to mean that powerful interest groups consult with one another to protect their mutual interests. They were there at ICANN’s baptism, they have captured the process by making it time-consuming and expensive, they know how to work the powerful staff, and they could care less about democracy if it serves their interests. Today they are the stakeholders. Everyone else is a spectator.  

So forgive me if I can’t get excited about participation in one of the processes put in place precisely to squelch any democratic input. 

Antony

On Apr 17, 2025, at 11:07 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 17, 2025 at 11:24 AM Antony Van Couvering <avc@avc.vc> wrote:
Because the current system is incestuous, rotten, opaque, and consistently produces time-serving telecom-industry ciphers to fill Board seats.

Not disagreeing. But we're so far beyond being able to do anything about it that whining about it now -- and here -- serves zero purpose. The last window of opportunity for serious change came and went, with no real pushback to the whole "empowered community" insider-driven bullshit, at the time of the IANA transition. So we're stuck with this.

The rot in the system that you describe might have been a greater cause for concern, except that the world cares less and less about web domains as a resource of interest in these days of Internet searches and AI chatbots. I haven't typed a URL into my browser for many months. While ICANN continues to make lots of money from domain rentals and thus has the largesse to hold grandiose meetings and subsidize participation, the world cares less about it than ever. It's devolving into the Internet equivalent of your local water and sewage utility, except that it's forever trying to figure out ways to get people to buy more sewer pipes. The best example of this is the annual orgy of futility known here as Universal Acceptance, desperately trying to sell Punycode to a world that has long since moved on. It's now just amusing to watch from a distance, just as amusing as when ICANN insiders think they have something to teach the world about effective Internet Governance.

At this point, very few people outside ICANN care what it does so long as (the technical function of) the DNS doesn't break. Just like the sewer utility.

In the meantime ... This thread isn't trying to fix the system, just make the best out of what's here.

- Evan