Insofar as we are talking about the imperial ICANN, the one that wants
to regulate the Internet, the one that is trying to obtain legal authority
over all IP address space and the domain name system, it is of primary
importance that we know who the ICANN board represents. No one living in
a democracy can be at all comfortable with hidden manipulations, with
groups of great power created by shadowy forces without any clear legal
authority.
Jim,
Great overview. It's also important to look at alternatives
to the single world government approach that's represented
by ICANN. The Internet arose and was successful because of
distributed administrative models, not centralized ones.
Even in other Internet legal areas, the emphasis is on
mechanisms of accommodating multiple administrative
approaches rather than proceeding with a centralized one.
Unfortunately, the names and addresses arena was seized upon
by traditionalists (which includes much more than the EU),
who are enamored with the prospect of global Internet governance.
--tony
