Last week, ICANN--the organization charged with governing the Internet's worldwide addressing system--officially launched a two-year study aimed at determining how and whether ordinary Internet users should have a say in its decision-making apparatus.
Specifically, the study will examine the process ICANN used last year to elect five "at-large" representatives to its board of directors. Study authors will also attempt to determine whether ICANN really needs an "at-large" constituency.
Auerbach, a Cisco Systems engineer and longtime ICANN critic who was elected as North America's at-large board representative, blasted the study.
"I think it's awful," Auerbach said. "It's like taking someone in for minor surgery and saying, 'By the way, we might just kill you in the process."
After promising the US Congress and the global online public that ICANN would establish an at-large membership, the organization should not be allowed to renege on its guarantee, Auerbach said.
Under ICANN's governance structure, the board--which has final say in all ICANN policy decisions--is supposed to be made up of nine internally selected members and nine at-large members.
But while the nine internal members are now in place, only five at-large members have been elected to represent the Internet public. How and whether ICANN will fill the remaining four board seats will depend on the outcome of the at-large membership study.
In the meantime, Auerbach contends, ICANN has made decisions by fiat regarding the creation of new Internet domains and the establishment of dispute resolution processes that will irrevocably change the look and feel of the Internet.
Given the study timeline, "so much (policy) will be put in place that even if an at-large (body) were (established) it would have its legs chopped off," Auerbach contended.
But ICANN president Mike Roberts today criticized Auerbach pointing the finger at ICANN, since, he argues, the at-large study was born out of a compromise between the at-large representatives themselves and not out of any action of the ICANN board.
"The reason why there is going to be this two-year hiatus is because the community involved with the at-large (members) could not come to a consensus on how they should proceed," Roberts said.
ICANN had to scrap its original plan for creating a full at-large membership when a diverse coalition led by a handful of US civil liberties groups criticized that plan as being "undemocratic."
Ultimately, the ICANN board struck a compromise under which changes were made to the election process to make it more democratic. The flip side of that compromise was that only five, rather than the full nine would be elected under the retooled plan, Roberts said.
The study was agreed to under that compromise, Roberts added. "Karl is basically saying 'I don't like the...compromise."
As to Auerbach's complaints about ICANN's decision-making process, Roberts argued that more emphasis should be placed on the results of that process than on the process itself.
"Karl and the group he tends to speak for continue to allege that because the process wasn't beautiful, the outcome is defective," Roberts said. "I think the actions of the board have been a howling success."
But at least one of those actions will be subjected to further scrutiny next week when Roberts and other ICANN officials go before a congressional subcommittee to defend the process by which the organization selected seven new Internet domains last November.
At its Los Angeles meeting in November, ICANN approved the creation of .aero, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro, and .biz. Once operational, the domains will become the first generic Internet suffixes added to the global addressing system since the current addressing system was first implemented more than a decade ago.
But in approving the seven new domains, each of which was proposed by a company or consortium of some sort, ICANN declined to approve suggested suffixes proposed by nearly 40 other applicants seeking to operate new domains.
Many of the failed applicants--each of whom plunked down US$50,000 for the right to be considered--began decrying the process mere minutes after the ICANN Board of Directors announced its decision in November.
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