The Net's Faltering Democracy

from the ICANN-as-a-choke-point dept

Simson Garfinkel has written an article talking about ICANN's power over the internet, and how it, as a private business, has been doing plenty of things that help out other private businesses - but has done little to make itself a legitimate organization for creating the best policies for the internet and its users. He quotes ICANN President Stuart Lynn's claim that "ICANN is not an experiment in global online democracy" and responds: "Perhaps ICANN serves as a model for systematically shutting the public out of messy policy debates and letting the appointed representatives of global business take over. Perhaps democracy is overrated."

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