Fred Krueger announced he was leaving Minds + Machines (MMX) two weeks ago, and then announced he sold over 10% of his shares a few days later, wrote a an interesting post on Facebook today which is well worth a read so I’m reprinting it here.
Fred is a good writer so here is his post from his Facebook page entitled “Why I hate ICANN” (and he is not alone).
Here is the post reprinted unedited:
“”One of the advantages of leaving MMX is that I am finally done with ICANN — which is one of the single worst organizations I have come across on this planet.
Like the European Union — ICANN is a prototypical example of self governing bodies gone bad. And it’s really bad. Let me count the ways…
1. ICANN spends something like 100 Million dollars a year on travel (more if you count the total waste spent by all ICANN participants) on various boondoggles in places like Cartagena, Columbia. The *exact same people* show up at these meetings, begging the question as to why they don’t meet in a more cost efficient location such as Playa Del Ray, California, where ICANN is headquartered. And the answer is — that would be favoriting the US. These other countries deserve their own galas, opening ceremonies etc.. — and they deserve the money that comes to them from hosting an ICANN event…
2. ICANN purports to be an equal access organization. Anybody can join a working group. At least, thats the theory. In reality, its a close knit circle of insiders, with nobody even talking to new people. Hard core ICANN veterans, with no real qualification other than they know other such people, dominate the discussion and policy. Ultimately, the ICANN board makes all the important decisions. The notion of stakeholder participation is a joke.
3. ICANN took something like 7 years to roll out new gTLDs, when they could have just concluded an auction in a week. The entire process was a complete farce. In the end, it was just an auction, amongst 10 or so key players (MMX being one of them). But I wasted years dealing with the inefficiencies of the program.
4. Two surreal words. Digital Archery. In 2012, ICANN decided they needed to figure out who went first in app evaluation.They ended up doing the obvious solution — a random draw. But for about 5 months, they wasted everybody’s time working on a “non-chance” method with the above name. Google it.
5. Everything connected with “community” is a complete joke. ECO is considered a community, but Green is not. Hotels yes, Restaurants no. Sometimes one panel member says yes, another says no. It’s a farce.
6. ICANN loves to add regulation on top of regulation in the name of protecting the consumer. To become an ICANN accredited registrar you need to jump through hoops. But to become a reseller and do 99% of the same thing you click three boxes online. It’s entirely a legal strategy to cover ICANN in the case of a lawsuit.
I could go on and on. I do like new TLDs. But having ICANN be in change of them is like putting the French in change of technology. You just know its going to be a mess. And sure enough, it is.
