Conflict of interest, whether real or imagined, looks bad for ICANN as it faces fresh criticism over its new TLD plans.
ICANN has a problem.
As criticism mounts against its approval of the new top level domain name program, some groups are pointing fingers at an inherent conflict of interest.
The key example is former ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush.
One month after pushing through a vote on the new TLD program in his last meeting as Chairman he took a role with publicly-traded Top Level Domain Holdings, a company focused solely on profiting from new top level domain names.
There are no rules prohibiting this move, as Dengate Thrush pointed out when I interviewed him about the new role.
I can’t blame him for jumping at the opportunity. I also don’t think putting the program up for a vote in June had anything to do with profiting from it — I think it had to do with getting the program approved before his term as Chairman was over.
But it doesn’t matter. The problem is it just looks bad.
Recently Internet Advertising Bureau joined Association of National Advertisers in opposing the new top level domains program. Interestingly, I haven’t seen them point to this specific conflict. But other groups, including Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, have.
ICANN has received plenty of pushback on its new TLD plans both during the process of creating the applicant rules as well as after it was approved. Everyone has an opinion, and it would be wrong to point to Dengate Thrush’s move as proof that this is just a money grab.
But that won’t stop people from bringing attention to it, and that will bad for ICANN.
The press is all over this, Andrew.
Thrush, Call in Mr.Waverly The Man from U.N.C.L.E will sort it out.
He will get what he deserves. As was the case with .travel, .jobs, .aero, .cat, .biz, .mobi, .coop and .museum, no one is going to want any of the new unfamiliar extensions. Seems obvious to me that the entire gtld concept will be a huge failure; and, now that Thrush has jumped ship, he will soon find himself perched on the top deck when his new vessel hits the cyber-iceberg in 2013. Brrr. That water is gonna be mighty cold.
As Momma Gump would say, what goes around comes around.
It’ll be interesting to see what Beckstrom does next too.
much ado about nothing.
this article looks planted to me and is likely another in the thread with the ANA and IAB press releases.
the last acts of the desperate opponents of new TLDs. if you look at the article, the only actual statement that ties to the headline is what looks like an out-of-context quote to a leading question.
much ado about nothing.
It is much much more serious, it calls into question governments faith in the multi-stakeholder model.
ICANN and any other future multi-stakeholder body needs truly selfless people who act and are seen to act in the public interest at all times.
Now remind me what was Peter Dengate Thrush’s response when Steve Steve DelBianco asked him about the need to define Public Interest?