Karl Auerbach, the netizen who took on ICANN (the organization that governs the Internet's domain names) after he was elected to the board of directors and denied access to ICANN's financial, has given a great interview to Richard Koman at the O'Reilly Network:
Since when has efficiency of ICANN been an important goal? ICANN has been the most inefficient organization in the world; it's only created seven top-level domains in its four years of existence. And it only had elected members for half of that period, and only a partially elected membership. ICANN doesn't need efficiency; it needs to examine itself and discover, for example, that its staff is utterly out of control. Stuart Lynn in Shanghai got up and announced to the world that ICANN is going to have three new top-level domains of the sponsored type. Who decided that's what we need or that we need only three of them? Stuart Lynn did. He didn't consult with the community yet he declared the future business landscape of the Internet. He decided who is going to be on the main street of the Internet and who is going to be forced into the back alley. That's not a decision that arose out of elections and non-elections; that arose out of the fact that ICANN has an irresponsible staff that doesn't account to the board, much less to the public, and the board doesn't do anything about it. Insubordination is rife throughout ICANN and the board simply chooses to be powerless and not do anything about it. Elections are a non sequiteur. They have nothing to do with this issue.
(Thanks, Richard!)
