Appalling headline, perhaps- but an essential story. ICANN, the body charged with handling the privatisation of the domain name system, has just wrapped up its board meeting in Yokohoma, Japan. Pay attention to what happened: there will be a test later. First off, many will be pleased to know that the group faced some heavy public criticism this time around. This came from the direction of two high government officials, Paul Twomey (head of the Governmental Advisory Committee) and Christopher Wilkinson (the European Union’s lead official on ICANN), who warned that the group’s plans to reduce the amount of consumer representatives on its Board could be tantamount to signing its own death warrant. In a suprise all-guns-blazing attack on ICANN, the two officials argued that a Board weighted too heavily in favour of industry could invite government regulation  in order to protect consumer interests, which, in effect, would end the ICANN experiment in privatisation. This, of course, was more than a warning for the future, since the current state of ICANN is one in which industry interests reign supreme. With only one consumer interest group represented so far, some are arguing that ICANN is rapidly beginning to look more like a cartel - a combination of independent business organizations formed for their own benefit - than a not-for-profit organisation. As far as the two government officials were concerned, ICANN should be a two-part body, formed of an Internet supply industry association

and a consumer association, with the associations balancing out each other’s natural interests. And yet ICANN continued its attempt to play consumers out like suckers at Yokohoma, proposing to further reduce the amount of At Large directors represented on the board. Whilst numerous participants spoke out against the proposal, the Board still opted to weaken user representation. Of nineteen directors only one, Vint Cerf, questioned the fact that just five (count ‘em) members of public will be elected this fall, and that the remaining four seats will remain closed for another two years.  You have to wonder how long governments are going to put up with this kind of thing before stepping in. On the subject of new top-level domain names, which has many corporates gagging with impatience, Board members were talking of a range of between six to ten - but ultimately left the number undetermined. What suprised everyone was application fee: the mere submission of an application to operate a new TLD will cost $50,000, which the Board said they felt this was ‘necessary to cover evaluation costs’. Also necessary to keep the little guy out of the game? Take it from us: someone ain’t playing fair here. The whole, sorry tale, in ICANN’s own words: www.icann.org