Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet
▻http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/03/extraordinary_verdict_against_icann/?mt=1470300257409
In an extraordinary judgment, the organization that hopes to take over running the top level of the internet later this year has been slammed by an independent review as at best incompetent and at worst deliberately mendacious.
The decision by ICANN’s Independent Review Panel (IRP) over the organization’s decision to refuse “community” status for three applications covering business suffixes has exposed a level of double-dealing that many suspected occurred in the non-profit organization but has been difficult to prove.
The ICANN Board Governance Committee (BGC) in particular comes under fire for having repeatedly failed to carry out its duties.
Despite serious allegations being made against ICANN’s staff and the “independent” evaluator it had selected – the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – the panel found that the BGC did not carry out any investigation. Instead it had relied solely on material supplied by ICANN’s legal team – the very people at the center of the complaints.
“The BGC failed to address any of these assertions,” the judgment reads. Later: “The BGC admittedly did not examine whether the EIU or ICANN staff engaged in unjustified discrimination or failed to fulfill transparency obligations.”
ICANN hopes to take over functioning of the top level of the internet from the US government in October this year, after which it will be solely responsible for deciding how the internet’s numbering and naming systems are carried out.
A key concern with that move is that ICANN is not sufficiently transparent or accountable. Despite two years of efforts to restructure the organization to make it more accountable, come October the ICANN board will retain complete control over the organization’s decisions and its staff will remain accountable only to the board.
As such, the failure of the board to even look at allegations of staff misbehavior is alarming, given the enormous powers the organization will soon assume.