Hi David, On Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 8:55 AM David Mackey <mackey361@gmail.com> wrote:
However, I feel it's important that as we become more informed about the ICANN mission, we do not give up the realization that most of the End User world is not informed about ICANN's mission.
Having myself spent "untold hours" of volunteer time within ICANN, and subsequently many years looking at it from the outside, I assert that it is a legitimate question to ask **why** it matters whether or not End Users should care, let alone know, about ICANN or its mission. The DNS is part of Internet infrastructure, albeit an increasingly legacy part. Most end-users don't know or care about their local electrical or water utility's mission beyond "provide your infrastructure reliably, scaled to the population, for as little cost as possible". Why should ICANN be different? Why can't ICANN just quietly do its job of making sure that the DNS is reliable? Why does the public *need* to know about it so long as its function is served? ICANN didn't need to re-invent protocols for unique name allocation, countries have agreed among themselves how to allocate trade names and even codified it in what is known as the Berne Convention. The early decisions that DNS name allocation was a resource to be financially exploited rather than public utility separate ICANN from most other components of public infrastructure. By encouraging and profiting from this exploitation, ICANN has been able to finance itself to a level not known by other forms of infrastructure, Internet or otherwise. But this conflict of interest -- becoming financially dependent on the resource it is supposed to manage/regulate -- has truly morphed ICANN into an organization far too preoccupied with its own inflated sense of importance. What its bubble calls multistakeholderism, the rest of the world calls self-indulgent, financially-conflicted industry capture. "Empowered community" is a cruel joke, that I think is more appropriately named "Entitled Community", having ICANN decision making accountable to ... only its own self-appointed bubble. Indeed, I find that UA is such a perfect manifestation of the bubble's delusion of its own self-importance. (Thankfully the California Attorney-General has demonstrated ICANN's true limits of non-accountability, for better or worse.) Therefore, the need for education of End Users will always be part of the
At-Large community's mission.
I call bullshit on that assertion, having been part of At-Large for a decade -- serving as NARALO's very first chair and later Vice-Chair of ALAC. I know intimately how the sausage is made. Had At-Large cared about End-Users rather than itself it would have demanded public education initiatives such as: - awareness how dot-com is not the same as dot-co, and they are governed totally differently - more-widely publicizing domain-abuse information - explaining why a single bookseller owns the entire .books TLD (etc) - surveying what end-users actually want from the DNS so that At-Large can better understand and advance their interests Let's be very clear and honest about this. Any time that At-Large has determined that an ICANN action goes against the public interest, it has been ... dissuaded ... from pressing its case. The mere threat of ICANN withholding travel and other funding has been enough to get At-Large to quietly drop initiatives and self-censor. Were an At-Large education (or any other) campaign to threaten the growth of domain name sales, it has no chance to happen. Real public service might be part of At-Large's mission, but by design it will never rise beyond the cosmetic and aspirational. I hope the opportunity that Glenn has given us with this conversation is to
look outside of the ICANN bubble and learn about the importance of First Nations - Inuit scripts & languages in Canada & Québec using the frame of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada <https://nctr.ca/about/history-of-the-trc/truth-and-reconciliation-commission...>. It might be a good idea to consider Glenn's post, outside of the ICANN Bubble, and within the context of the TRC Calls to Action <https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_E...> with respect to Language and Culture (Actions 13-17).
Long before ICANN cared about IDNs, the world was trusting the Unicode consortium (for fonts) and ISO (for keyboards) to address the needs of global end-users who require non-Latin scripts. But just as it previously re-invented how to solve name-conflict disputes, ICANN chose to reinvent non-Latin scripting using Punycode and later demand -- and then beg -- that the word adopt ITS choice. This begging is now manifested as UA, the height of arrogance and self-unawareness. It continues, year after year, to be an exercise in ever-increasing futility as the world moves on. Domain names are not the ultimate Internet needs of end users. That would be the content and services provided by various entities. "Memorable" domain names are among many ways end-users get to their final Internet destinations. That ICANN's community has declared domain names a vital component of free speech and cultural maintenance is a joke that only those outside the bubble get. As such, the invocation of Canadian aboriginal politics to advance what is ultimately a commercial agenda (selling more IDNs) is somehow both sad and amusing. - Evan