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www.infoworld.com/opinions/morewindowmanager_f.html

----Ben

---------- Forwarded message ----------
In a major shift of power, the board rewrote ICANN's bylaws, eliminating the 
requirement that nine out of 19 of its directors be elected by Internet users 
at large.

Now, instead of guaranteeing that nine directors will be democratically 
elected, the bylaws state that only five will be elected this year. 

This is significant because most of ICANN's 19 interim and appointed directors 
are involved with for-profit Internet businesses. When the U.S. Department of 
Commerce contracted with ICANN in 1998, its bylaws
"balanced" the directors with financial interests by promising Internet users 
the right to elect nine out of 19 directors soon.

Instead of honoring this commitment, the 19 currently appointed directors have 
voted for a study of "whether the ICANN Board should include at-large 
directors" at all.


Is it naive to think that any of this matters? (I'm thinking, of course, of 
Marcus's post of yesterday!)


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