• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Domain Industry & Internet News

Domain Industry & Internet News

Domain Name Industry News

  • Home
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submit News
  • Comment Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise Hosting & Domain Industry Jobs
You are here: Home / icann / ICANN Communications Fiasco

ICANN Communications Fiasco

December 2, 2011 by Michele Neylon

Plaque on the ICANN (Internet Corporation for ...
Image via Wikipedia

If you’re a big international organisation you need to be good at communicating.

ICANN, unfortunately, doesn’t have an exactly stellar track record in this area. One of the organisation’s biggest critics, Kieren McCarthy, was hired by the organisation to improve things, but he left a couple of years later (though he hasn’t left the organisation alone!)

ICANN wants to appear to be an international organisation that “cares” about its stakeholders and it goes through the motions of doing this from to time. But its communications and transparency, or lack thereof, are constantly causing it and its stakeholders headaches.

Bulgaria wants an internationalised domain name. They want a particular string as they, the Bulgarian internet users and government, think that the string they’ve chosen is the right one. ICANN / IANA refuses and when Bulgaria asked why they were stonewalled. ICANN’s CEO finally made a clear statement about the situation earlier this week, but whether a sovereign nation will accept what he was saying or not is another matter.

I’ve personally asked about the redelegation of a ccTLD (no prizes which one) and was also stonewalled until I pushed the matter in the public forum, via Twitter and by almost harassing the organisation’s CEO. I never really got a clear reply, but I did get a reply.

Fast forward to this week.

ICANN sends a letter to the government of Senegal to complain about conditions in one of the hotels during the ICANN meeting earlier this year. The wording of the letter was anything but diplomatic and probably should never have been sent – at least not to the government!

ICANN then pulled the letter from their site, though of course anyone who cares about the situation already has seen it and might even have a copy of it.

ICANN then issues another letter which is a rather clumsy apology.

I tweeted the other day:

“transparency? *cough* So they wrote it, sent it, published it – got negative comments + removed it from site …”

I should probably post the modified and improved (?) version of events now ..

You can read some of the commentary on the letters here, here and here.

Considering how strained ICANN’s relations with the GAC are at even the best of times is this kind of hamfisted and unprofessional behaviour what we’re all paying for?

I genuinely feel sorry for any member of ICANN’s staff who might feel embarassed by this week’s mess. They deserve better.

 

Filed Under: icann Tagged With: Bulgaria, Country code top-level domain, icann, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, senegal

About Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade.
He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jason Thompson says

    December 2, 2011 at 6:54 pm

    This is definitely a controversial topic. ICANN’s reputation isn’t exactly stellar. With all of the money they are generating and the yearly price hikes they haven’t done much to help with much of anything. It looks like they might actually be facing the music fairly soon. Hopefully this will spark some big changes.

    • Michele Neylon says

      December 2, 2011 at 7:38 pm

      Jason
      What “yearly price hikes”?
      The only price increases I’m aware of are those coming from the domain registries – not from ICANN.

      Thanks for your comment

      Michele

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles

ICANN’s Cancún Meeting Was Almost Normal

Middle East DNS Forum to be Held in Istanbul

Gandi Merges with TWS to Form “Your.Online”

Anguilla Offline due to Fibre Issue

IGF 2023 to be Held in Kyoto, Japan

Recent Comments

  • ICANN Gets First Female CEO on Centralnic Head Honcho Announces Immediate Retirement
  • Kieren McCarthy Elected to Nominet Board on Nominet Election Candidates 2022 Finally Announced
  • Michele Neylon on Nominet Taking RDAP Out of Beta
  • Gavin Brown on Nominet Taking RDAP Out of Beta
  • ICANN Heading to Hamburg (ICANN78) and Los Angeles (GDD) Plus Training For African Registries - Goldstein Report on ICANN Announces GDD Summit Dates & Location

Categories

Blogroll

  • Alex Bligh
  • Circle ID
  • Domain Incite
  • Domain Name News
  • Domain Name Wire
  • Jason Thompson

Blogs

  • Domain Gang
  • Stéphane Bortzmeyer

Archives

Recent Comments

  • ICANN Gets First Female CEO on Centralnic Head Honcho Announces Immediate Retirement
  • Kieren McCarthy Elected to Nominet Board on Nominet Election Candidates 2022 Finally Announced
  • Michele Neylon on Nominet Taking RDAP Out of Beta
  • Gavin Brown on Nominet Taking RDAP Out of Beta
  • ICANN Heading to Hamburg (ICANN78) and Los Angeles (GDD) Plus Training For African Registries - Goldstein Report on ICANN Announces GDD Summit Dates & Location

Categories

Blogroll

  • Alex Bligh
  • Circle ID
  • Domain Incite
  • Domain Name News
  • Domain Name Wire
  • Jason Thompson
  • Nigel Roberts

Blogs

  • Domain Gang
  • Stéphane Bortzmeyer

Copyright © 2023 InternetNews.me