ICANN Bid for Independent Status Gets Cool Reception

I am simply amazed at this response.

It appears to be specifically designed to infuriate me personally. It is incredible how an important discussion about how to give more individuals more power within ICANN has descended, in just a handful of comments, into an effort to provoke personal animosity.

I have nothing but respect for Professor Michael Froomkin and in the course of the many interviews I have had with him over the years, both on and off the record, I have found his insights and knowledge incredibly useful. I hope I will continue to find myself in that position.

Since there is a personal element in this, let me answer in a personal capacity. What I do - and what I will continue to do - is ask questions.

Wherever I see something that doesn't seem right, I ask questions about it. And then when, as happens in most cases where people are not comfortable with the answers and so refuse to provide them, I make those questions and the answers as public as possible.

Naturally, alot of people don't like this. And even those that see the value of it hate it when the questions are directed toward them.

I mostly ignored the inaccuracies, fantasies and vague conspiracies about ICANN when I was reporting on the organisation. Sometimes I would check them out and then waste hours researching claims that turned out to be no more than one person's groundless feeling.

It also wasn't in my interests as a reporter to waste time on them. The story was what ICANN was actually doing, not what others claimed ICANN was doing, having taken one fact, done no research and extrapolated it into a vague conspiracy.

Now, working for ICANN, it is in my interests to pay attention to the people that misrepresent what the organisation is doing, often making the wildest claims with the weakest evidence. Objectivity and research thrown out the window to be first with another over-excited complaint.

If ICANNWatch - or any other individual or organisation - produces material that points to a failing in an ICANN process, I will feel duty bound to find out what happened and try to fix it.

But I also feel duty bound to the people that I hope to bring into ICANN for the first time, people from across the world who care about the Internet and not about old scores; people who want to share information, not misrepresent it.

They will not get all their information from ICANN - and nor should they - but if that information from outside is incorrect and if I then I have to spend a significant amount of my time correcting false assertions, then you can bet I will turn up on messageboards taking issue.

I never apologised to ICANN for giving it a hard time, and I will not apologise to anyone else either. However I did recognise ICANN when it occasionally improved, and I will offer the same positive response and thanks to any organisation that highlights real issues with the ICANN model.

Kieren McCarthy
General manager of public participation, ICANN

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Pick up the phone! by Kieren McCarthy

Privacy Policy: We will not knowingly give out your personal data -- other than identifying your postings in the way you direct by setting your configuration options -- without a court order. All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by ICANNWatch.Org. This web site was made with Slashcode, a web portal system written in perl. Slashcode is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.
You can syndicate our headlines in .rdf, .rss, or .xml. Domain registration services donated by DomainRegistry.com