ICANN independence: ICANN’s new excuse for allowing the .org transfer

An array of useful idiots have started vomiting “rebellious” posts and articles around the web supporting the new excuse that NoEthos publicists invented for ICANN. This new “argument” will be used to allow the .org transfer to proceed.

The excuse is that ICANN must accept the transfer so as to show the world that ICANN is independent of the US government.

Let’s all raise the ICANN independence flag and cheer for the corrupted “soldiers” while disregarding all laws, logic and common sense!!!

I wrote in a post that ICANN and ISOC/PIR immediately agreed to an extension trying to find some new “arguments” to put into the .org transfer approval. This is what they have been working on TOGETHER for months.

So this is what NoEthos Capital geniuses came up after the California Attorney General slammed ICANN over the .org transfer of ownership. ICANN and their “friends” and colleagues at ISOC/PIR/Ethos were very angry that an Attorney General intervened with their schemes. You see it was easy to disregard thousands of people that opposed their dubious scheme.

So yes, corrupted board of ICANN, you should make the wrong decision so that the California Attorney General learns its lesson not to intervene with your corrupted schemes.

It is a bit ironic since ICANN is an organization incorporated under the law of the State of California in the United States.

The Internet Society (ISOC) is also an American nonprofit organization and Public Interest Registry is a US not-for–profit organization created by the Internet Society (ISOC). Finally, Ethos Capital is a Venture Capital Firm also located in United States.

So they all want to operate in the US, employ mostly US citizens, work with US contractors and companies but obey to no US laws! They want all the economic benefits but they want to exist in a corrupted void where no law applies to them.

Do you know all this, Mr Xavier Becerra, California Attorney General?

The useful idiots

So lets’ get back to these useful idiots that they either don’t know what they talking about or they are getting paid to write these posts. Either way they are making a fool out of themselves.

Look at what these useful idiots below are saying (were these posts sponsored by ISOC, PIR or NoEthos Capital or did they willfully made the posts expecting something in return in the future?) and see what I mean. These 3 posts on CircleId just came out this week and we are a week before the long anticipated ICANN decision that is expected on May 4.

Andrew Mack: “California shouldn’t get in the way”

“The primary focus of discussion on the .ORG sale thus far has been gaining binding commitments around price controls and on censorship. And the community — not the California government — should insist that PIR makes good on their commitments. But let’s not lose sight of the other big issues on the table: the independence of the ICANN community and the online success of the non-profit world.

We, as an ICANN community, asked for independence from government, for good reason. And the global non-profit community can have a better — and more effective — PIR, with the incentive to offer more and better service to the global NGO community. These are positive outcomes, and California shouldn’t get in the way.”

Mr Xavier Becerra, Andrew says you should do your work. Do you agree?

Jonathan Zuck: “Let ICANN work. Let the Empowered Community work.”

“No doubt as attorney general of the state in which ICANN is incorporated, Becerra has a legitimate interest in the organization’s compliance with laws. But influencing ICANN’s business decisions undermines ICANN’s independence and sets a bad precedent for the future.

Even those who oppose the .ORG sale or want greater protections as requested by the Noncommercial Stakeholders Group and the ALAC, should be wary of what this portends. It opens a door where ICANN could succumb to pressure to revise its privacy policies for registrars and registries to comply with California law — or face scrutiny over its nonprofit status.

This precedent would set ICANN back a decade and make the California state attorney general’s office the go-to place to influence policy. Anybody who knows me knows that I have been a persistent watchdog on ICANN accountability. It must and should be held accountable for the decisions it makes. But for ICANN to be successful, it must be independent. Let ICANN work. Let the Empowered Community work. Whatever our intended “ends,” the consequences of these “means” are deeply disturbing.”

“Let ICANN work”… We did and this is the result Jonathan! What a joke!

Teri Schroeder: “.ORG must evolve and grow, one way or another.”

“I think .ORG can be better for non-profits such as ISAFE if Ethos follows through on its promises to invest in its expansion around the globe and offer new services, especially for small organizations that need help with regulatory compliance or fundraising. The proof will be in how Ethos and PIR spend the $10 million it’s committed toward social causes and who gets named to the Stewardship Council that is chartered with helping guide .ORG’s future.

For me, it comes back to this: No business can be static. It must grow, evolve and modernize; especially in today’s global market. If not, businesses will lose the essential energy that makes it a dynamic force for good. .ORG must evolve and grow, one way or another. The .ORG community deserves growth and modernization in order to build prosperity for all.”

Yes, one way or another. Let’s leave it all to luck and good faith… Right Teri?

Thank you for some sanity Anthony Rutkowski and Mitch Stoltz!

Anthony Rutkowski: “The sale represents the acceptance of the worst possible model as a “new norm” — that sets an atrocious precedent and abets potential corruptive behavior.”

“ICANN was created by the Clinton Administration as a political tactic to theoretically moderate the potential for abuse and answer concerns of the European Union over the unfolding private monetization model. However, ICANN became an organizational nightmare that emerged as the fox overseeing the hens. Now worth about a half a billion dollars and living off the sale of DARPA internet identifiers, it seems endlessly incented to grow the revenue. ICANN remains another bad decision.

Splitting the ORG domain registry off by itself to create yet another, independent, high-profit margin revenue stream seemed dubious and flawed when it occurred. (In the interest of full disclosure, I was a senior Verisign employee at the time who was involved in its failed bid for the ORG registry.) The award of the ORG license to a 501(c)3 non-profit like the Internet Society could be theoretically justified by helping them out — with an expectation of eschewing the propensity to garner monopoly-based revenue and substantially reducing the money skimmed off domain name registrations of entities that are largely small and non-profit organizations. (Additional disclosure, I was a co-founder of the Internet Society and first full-time Executive Director.) That expectation was wishful thinking. Splitting off the ORG domain was yet another bad decision.

We are now faced with the ultimate domain perfidy — monetizing a license to run a DARPA Internet registry for the alleged benefit of small and non-profit organizations to the tune of more than a billion dollars. The sale represents the acceptance of the worst possible model as a “new norm” — that sets an atrocious precedent and abets potential corruptive behavior. It is perhaps the pinnacle of egregious behavior — and certainly an embarrassment to those people who back in 1992 were attempting to establish a cost-based public interest model for an inherently public monopoly activity.”

Mitch Stoltz: “Approving the sale would also affirm the rising chorus of Internet users who fear that ICANN serves the interests of the largest registries and registrars at the expense of Internet users.”

“Following the strong objections of nonprofit Internet users and a marked lack of disclosure by PIR and Ethos, a rubber-stamp approval of the .ORG transfer, or an approval conditioned on token oversight that will be meaningless in practice, would only reinforce the conclusion that ICANN now considers itself unaccountable. It would also demonstrate that ICANN doesn’t take its public interest commitments seriously. This is especially true given ICANN’s refusal to disclose information to the Empowered Community about the .ORG transfer, shutting down the first invocation to date of that system of accountability. Approving the sale would also affirm the rising chorus of Internet users who fear that ICANN serves the interests of the largest registries and registrars at the expense of Internet users.

The sale of PIR to Ethos Capital risks selling out the interests of .ORG registrants, including millions of the world’s most important NGOs. ICANN must stand up for the well-being of NGOs in this time of global crisis by denying the sale of their domain registry to private equity investors. Otherwise, the decision may be taken out of ICANN’s hands. That would truly set a precedent that will harm NGOs and all Internet users in the long run.”

The decision was made years ago

But let’s not kid ourselves, this decision was made years ago. .Org will be transferred to NoEthos Capital. Fadi Chehade and his ICANN lackeys will get their way and it will take years for this decision to even be heard in front of a judge.

It is really sad seeing these ICANN board pawns following the PR stunts instructed by Ethos Capital. Shame on them all! Their names will be remembered forever.

ICANN will once again screw the general public to make a buck. This decision was made years ago and an Attorney General will not stop them. They have no accountability anyway. The corrupted board and staff will soon be working at ISOC/PIR/Ethos or some other domain name related company.

If you liked and support this post please retweet and share.