ICANN's Questionable Deals Coming Under Attack

News You Could Do Without

from the why-does-this-keep-happening? dept

How is it that ICANN continues to have free reign over the internet with little-to-no real oversight? The latest, as pointed out by Ed Felten, is that it looks like ICANN violated its own rules and did a secret deal with a front group for the airline industry to give them control over the .travel domain. This comes just a day after others noticed that the criteria used by ICANN to determine who should control .net was designed to favor one candidate by specifically including an extra criteria that didn’t actually matter and wasn’t in the criteria list that companies were supposed to be judged on. Meanwhile, ICANN continues to push for more money without telling anyone what they need it for, and kicking out the few board members elected by the public for oversight when they dared to ask to see ICANN’s records. However, ICANN seems to be able to keep doing what it’s doing, and making up its own rules while keeping the details secret all the time.