Internet Pioneer Paul Vixie says ICANN’s job is to serve the public, not caving in to demands from the companies

Dr Paul Vixie, a pioneer of the internet’s domain name system (DNS), has lashed out at the creation of hundreds of new top-level domains, ranging from .dog to .horse, and .cool to .porn, labelling them a money grab and a mistake. Vixie was speaking at the Ruxcon information security conference in Melbourne on Sunday about the importance of securing the internet’s DNS infrastructure.

According to Stilgherrian of ZDnet, Vixie while responding to audience question about ICANN said

“I think it is a money grab. My own view is that ICANN functions as a regulator, and that as a regulator it has been captured by the industry that they are regulating. I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs),”

“I’m sure that there will be another 2,000 of them sold, because $185,000 to pay the application fee for each one [is] chump change to the companies who want to make money doing this.”

In Vixie’s view, creating the new domains goes against ICANN’s purpose.

“ICANN is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity [under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law], and their job is to serve the public, not to serve the companies… I think that until they can come up with an actual public benefit reason they should be creating more of these, they’ve got no cause to act,” Vixie said.

“There should be no price at which you can buy .microsoft, but there is, and that’s a mistake. That indicates corruption, as far as I’m concerned.”

Vixie told his Ruxcon audience that while the internet has of course to enable global commerce, it has also enabled global crime. Read more