ICANN's Not a Nonprofit Organization

Reader examines ICANN's financials and calls to task those who are making a mint from the ICANN process.

[Response to comments on the ICANN process in
ISP Association Directory: Commercial Internet eXchange from April 20, 2001.]

[April 26, 2001]

Dear Editors:

ICANN, The Internet Authority for Assigned Names and Numbers released their proposed budget for the upcoming year. In that budget they list the cost for Staffing. For each Officer of this California Nonprofit Organization they propose a salary of $100,000 to $300,000. It goes on to say that the salaries are the average for the area in which they operate.

Not for Nonprofit Organizations it isn't. I am the CEO for a California Nonprofit Organization. My salary is $15,000 per year. Yes it could be more if we had the funding, but by more I mean in the range of $25,000 to $35,000 per year, not as high as ICANN is currently paying or proposing.

ICANN has come under fire and has to face Congressional hearings soon for it's practices of taking money from companies hoping to manage new tlds then not approving them for various suspicious reasons. It also has come under fire because there is representation for a variety of business interests including Board Members to represent ISPs, others to represent Registrars, others to represent Business Owners, others to represent Trademark Holders, which sounds like businesses have yet another block of votes.

Yet there is no constituency for Individual Users of the Internet and no constituency for Individual Domain Name Owners. No wonder WIPO finds for the Business vs the Individual in over 80% of the cases they arbitrate. Trademarks have been enforced online due to the vague writing of the UDRP, Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, one must sign in order to get a Domain Name. Those Trademarks have been enforced in respect to Domain Names way beyond what the law allows for offline. With the Business interests having virtually all of the votes on the ICANN Board it is no surprise.

ICANN paying it's staff exhorbitant salaries they show a total lack of realization of what Nonprofit means. If you were to add in the trips and accommodations in Geneva, Australia, Tokyo, and elsewhere like major corporations do in figuring their true salaries they would get closer to $500,000 per year.

In light of all the mistakes and misjustice at the hands of those in charge do we as individual users of the Internet, who get no vote or say in their decisions want to continue to fund the gravy train they are on?

http://www.icann.org/financials/preliminary-budget-19feb01.htm#VI

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic

http://www.VirtualAdFirm.com

P.S.

You know what I find most fascinating?

The review list that was open to the public to participate in, where ICANN claims to be seeking public input, got 150 subscribers with only about 15 of us who actually participated. This sampling is to review the processes that affect millions of Internet Users. How many people actually knew it existed? To subscribe to the current unofficial working group you go to the subscribe link here. Maybe you'd like to join.

URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wg-review

To post a message: wg-review@yahoogroups.com

To Subscribe: wg-review-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

To Unsubscribe: wg-review-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

The List owner: wg-review-owner@yahoogroups.com

Also see McElroy's Open Letter to the WIPO complaining that the process lacks conflict of interest rules, an appeals process, and a role for moderators.