The chairman of the series of meetings that attempted to lay the basis for the entity to run the internet domain and numbering systems, has launched a scathing attack on the current proposal that looks likely to be approved soon by the US government. Professor Tamar Frankel chaired the International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP) meetings in the US, Switzerland and Singapore and is an expert in corporate law and fiduciary expert at Boston University. She had no real involvement in DNS politics before being asked to chair the first IFWP meeting in early July, but has since kept tabs on the situation and has testified at congressional hearings on the matter. The IFWP meetings were an attempt to build a consensus in the internet community as to how to form the non-profit corporation to run the internet, as spelled out in the government’s white paper on the matter, published June 5. The current front-running proposal, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN), is based on bylaws drawn up by the late director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), Jon Postel and IANA’s lawyers. It claims to be based on widespread consultations within the internet community, but many are skeptical of that claim. Frankel says, The current ICANN model is entirely inappropriate. It is not legitimate. It flaunts the principles established in the White Paper, the open IFWP process and the subsequent proposed paper. She concludes that it makes a mockery of the trust people put in the process. Frankel’s main thrust is that the corporate model chosen for ICANN would be appropriate for a charitable non-profit organization, but not one which is going to have make decisions that will effect the economy and politics of the internet industry, which includes every company doing business on the web. For instance, the domain name supporting organization will have to decide whether to add more top-level domains in addition to .com, .net and .org and which ones to add. That could cause lawsuits as companies try to protect their trademarks across more domains. There are two other models emerging from the various suggestions put to the government. One is a that of a non-profit membership- based organization, and the other is a modified version of it that balances power between the board and the supporting organizations.
Frankel points out that the boards of charities normally have almost total power because they made up of altruistic people who want to serve the needs of others. She argues that the board of ICANN will be doing no such thing and more closely resembles that of a regular business. Frankel says that under the ICANN model, the power sharing between the board, which is self-perpetuating and the three supporting organizations, which are accountable to their members but to nobody else, could create instability because of the need for regular negotiations.
She argues that a membership-based organization controlled by a board that is elected by the membership, a model favored by groups such as the Open Root Server Confederation and the Boston Working Group (an offshoot of the IFWP process), would be appropriate for ICANN. She says the board of directors would be accountable to members and subject to judicial sanctions.
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