It's OK to like ICANN, warts and all

When people perceive that someone is performing a task incorrectly, they have a tendency to make fun of him and tell him how to do the job better. This tendency is magnified when the hapless object of scorn is a group that is supposed to govern. Because of this, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will probably continue to suffer the eternal criticism of disaffected Internet users, given that its role in the Internet is widely misunderstood and what little it does, it does with lots of missteps.

ICANN was established in 1998 to oversee the Internet's name and address system. Since then, making fun of ICANN has become a national - and possibly worldwide - sport. Those participating come from all parts of the political spectrum and have varying views of the Internet. Unfortunately, those doing the criticizing rarely propose what ICANN should be doing, usually because doing so would expose their proposals to the criticism of other ICANN bashers.

ICANN is in the odd position of trying to limit its scope while dealing with complaints that it doesn't include enough people. Its major detractors say ICANN is not doing enough to get typical Internet users involved in policy decisions - as if there were any way to identify and contact all Internet users about their views. Worse, critics claim that ICANN should increase its involvement in making the Internet more accessible to people and assert greater control over Internet content. To do these things, critics contend, ICANN needs to be more representative of Internet users.

Regardless of how you feel about Internet access and content, it is absurd to think that ICANN could possibly make a difference in either area. ICANN, a U.S.-chartered nonprofit organization with about two years of history, has absolutely no standing with world governments. What country in its right mind would turn over its sovereignty to ICANN when ICANN says "Here is who you must let use the Internet, and here is what they can and cannot say"? Anyone who demands that ICANN take on anything more than simple top-level domain name and IP address allocation misunderstands world politics.

This is not to say that ICANN is doing everything right. It has made some pretty dumb mistakes in recent months, and looks like it is about to make another huge blunder when it hands out monopolies to groups to control who gets into the top-level domain names.

Even so, there is probably no other group in the world that is better equipped to recover from its mistakes, given how much public scrutiny ICANN is under. ICANN's mistakes will continue to be very public, and hopefully the group will continue to improve. That's about the best we can expect.

Hoffman is director of the Internet Mail Consortium and the VPN Consortium. He can be reached at phoffman@imc.org.

Hoffman is director of the Internet Mail Consortium and the VPN Consortium. He can be reached at phoffman@imc.org.

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