Basically, someone "blows the whistle" and suddenly something that should have gone relatively under the radar blows up on your face. People start asking a lot of difficult questions and making a lot of noise.
So what do you do? You announce a private inquiry (or, to put it in ICANN's terms "We will thoughtfully and thoroughly evaluate the proposed acquisition to ensure that the .ORG registry remains secure, reliable, and stable.").
The point of the inquiry isn't to find out any new facts or correct any problems - it's to stall until this goes out of the public eye (people have short attention spans, and we are in the Holiday season which always helps with "forgetting"), to clear up their names of any wrongdoing (because they reviewed everything thoroughly and found no cause for concern) and to bury the evidence (because some of it will be "accidentally" misplaced into a shredder).
In a month or so, a report will come out saying that there is some cause for concern, but that the danger is either overblown or that their hands are tied so nothing can be done due to this or that circumstance (legal, financial, etc). It will come with a stern paragraph warning that internal guidelines (you know, the ones the public can't see) must be reviewed sometime in the near future (i.e., around the year 2050) to prevent this from happening again, but it will conclude that everyone did their due diligence properly and we were all just victims of circumstances.
In short, better luck next time.
Why yes, people have called me a cynic, why do you ask?
Not always. It's quite often a way of giving the organisation a formal out, a way of admitting 'we dun goofed'.
The harm they do to society is on a much bigger scale.
Time to do something worthwhile with that enforcement power.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...
It died with sustained US pressure at the UN as the last gasp of Harry Anslinger, supporter of prohibition who had already given the world Reefer Madness and a load of invented racist "evidence" for the harms of marijuana in the 1930s. His team brought sustained pressure for the globe to adopt a war on drugs. Oh, and there a doctor who single handedly prescribed tens of thousands of prescriptions making a bit of an impact, single handedly, in London sixties drug culture.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/08/...
In this case, ICANN is the body governing all domain names. There are individuals who have moved from employment at ICANN to those organizations involved in the sale of the .ORG tld. Link contains dramatis personae[0].
The movement of individuals between regulator entities and regulated entities (both directions), is often considered a sign of regulatory capture.
There is a common tension, perhaps inevitable, in regulation: Those most familiar with an industry, and therefore with the best knowledge to regulate it, are those who work in that industry. Thus, the best people for a regulator to hire are those who have worked in the industry.
Similarly, those most qualified to advise on matters associated with regulation are those who have crafted the regulation. Thus, the best people for an entity in industry to hire to manage regulatory compliance are those who have worked for the regulatory body.
This wicket becomes sticky quickly.
[0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-...
Source? I'm interested in reading about this
I have to admit that the last 2 paragraphs do sound like they are trying to weasel out of responsibility though.
Through the lens of ultra-capitalism, "the good guys" are a market imbalance to be exploited. A variation on "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
In hindsight, the fragility of overall Internet governance was incredibly obvious. Even if this .org sale goes ahead, the governance is still fragile because there are many other aspects to the Web / Internet that are still run by "the good guys" and therefore likely to already be in the sights of the morally bankrupt.
The question is, what can we do about it? How do we react to the .org sale to ensure that inevitable future shenanigans will be met by increasingly profit-negating blowback?
The long term fragmentation effects this may have on the web are... difficult to predict.
That's actually through two lenses: it's the image through lens of ultra-capitalism through the lens of Marxist thought. The mainstream economic position would be that "the good guys" are neutral as far as the market is concerned, which is mainly interested in satisfying the average of the goals of whoever is spending money. In this case the domain owners are spending the money, so this scandal would be "uncapitalistic" in the sense that the buyers aren't being served.
Maybe if you look at the market "blueprints", a static template not taking into account the dynamics of the actual system.
There are at least two ways the markets will work to erase those moral values that do not directly contribute to profit. One, moral values held by people are strong preferences, and as such they'll be exploited, as GP said. An ethically sound option will command a premium over the default state, because people who want it value it more, for non-monetary reasons. Two, given a mostly amoral demand, companies that compromise morals to lower costs/increase profits have a competitive advantage over those with integrity, forcing the latter to either abandon their principles or risk getting outcompeted.
You can also connect those two points together by noting that individuals are also competing - against each other for status, against the ever rising costs of living. The end result is such a low ceiling on morality as we observe. You can't possibly, at the same time, care about or even afford getting clothing made without slave labor, food made without extreme animal cruelty, jewlery and electronics that don't have blood of innocents in their supply pipeline, smart technologies that don't abuse people's privacy and prop up surveillance. Also note note that, when people are willing to express their ethical stance on any of those issues, a whole mini industry pops up - willing to sell you purportedly ethical goods at huge markup.
Yes, the market is as morally neutral as an internal combustion engine is a hunk of metal that's carbon neutral when it sits on the shelf. Things change when you fuel it up and turn it on.
(Now, I'm not saying "markets are bad". But they do have perverse side effects that need to be kept in mind and accounted for, before they consume the very civilization they helped build.)
You could say that about every government, yet there's widespread corruption in most (or all) countries[1]. There's even corruption in democratic governments that are directly accountable to their citizens every few years (via elections). Given the way the ICANN board is appointed is... indirect at best, thinking that ICANN are the "good guys" is wishful thinking at best.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
At least the goal of the public sector is to serve the public whereas the goal of the private sector is to serve the interests of there shareholders.
If this was a private company on both sides wouldn't we just be hailing it as a big win for shareholders and/or demanding the government step in and intervene?
If you believe that, hypothetically the best choice would be some sort of private nonprofit, independent of the government but bound to inaction by charter.
Whether being directly controlled by government would be an improvement is somewhat debatable - would lawmakers be reasonably hands-off, like they are with things like GPS and NIST time services? Or would the opportunity to block pornhub/piratebay/wikileaks prove irresistible?
That's probably too extreme, but I love it as a starting point / baseline!
1. It doesn't deliver the claimed increase the supply of domain names, as no-one would build a business or brand on whatever.info without securing whatever.com
2. It does shake down domain registrants for cash - if you already own whatever.com you'd better get whatever.info and whatever.sucks before someone else squats them.
3. These factors mean .info domains and suchlike are a stereotype of sketchy sites, which is a negative feedback loop.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ICANN&oldid=93014...
Goal, yes. In the abstract. Unfortunately, humans run everything. Most humans are decent and will try to uphold the public good. Some get into positions of control and decide they can profit off of it, so why not?
Society's constant struggle is to keep these greedy F*'s from screwing the rest of us. Just like freedom must be paid for, so must we constantly root out corruption and greed.
Imagine if this kind of 'accountability' was applied to the rest of society. Oh, you robbed a bank? Well, you're banned from this branch for 4 years! Don't do it again!
It is very unreasonable to expect any set of people in any setting at any time, whose views you don't know, to hold your interests or expectations.
"Good people" would be very different to you and a self interested opportunist.
If the rules have changed such that it is broken and the sale goes through then great. If that is what it takes to bring awareness to prevent the next. Sitting and hoping that your interests are considered never ever works.
I don’t think it’s really possible to live one’s life with a completely zero-sum cynical-interest model.
What can ICANN or any of us measure here that would block the sale? Trust? Former ICANN CEO is likely trusted is he not?
I thought ICANN was supposed to be the good guys? You know, the responsible managers of the Internet and providing solid governance which serves as the best argument against any kind of government intrusion? I'm hoping they didn't just grow bored with it and decide to get rid of it. As though it was some sort of dearly loved Google service with mild profitability and little-to-no opportunity for internal career development. ;)