I was going to wait until after the archives are posted to report on the recent CIRA [administrators of the Canadian .ca ccTLD] General Meeting here, but will cover a few relevant points now. CIRA's meeting was webcast (in two languages, English and French, Canada is officially a bilingual country), and included a mechanism for online voting. Any .ca registrant is considered a voting general member of CIRA (the general membership also elects nine of the twelve CIRA BoD members, one of the remaining three is appointed to represent end-user interests). The general membership votes on the appointment of the external auditors.

Compare and contrast. CIRA is only a year old yet somehow has managed a number of things that ICANN has spent a few years promising will happen real soon now. It was Mr. Roberts at the helm of ICANN for most of that time whilst it went in circles, floundered, and reversed course. The most polite thing that can be said is that he lacks credibility. Less politely, one could muse whether he knew exactly what he was doing. If not, he was in the wrong job. If so, who was he really working for? -g