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