Ed Felten passes along a story about some questionable behavior at ICANN.
According to Michael Froomkin at ICANNWatch, evidence has come to light that ICANN secretly cut a deal with IATA, an airline industry association, to create a new ".travel" domain and give control of it to a front organization controlled by IATA. If true, this is a serious breach of ICANN's own rules and undermines ICANN's legitimacy. As Michael says, this is a story that deserves more attention that it is likely to get.
In a discussion about Internet jurisdiction, someone recently asked me "who governs the Internet". The best answer is probably ICANN, but as Ed said, "it's hard to justify ICANN's power as anything other than an accident of that history". It's always easy to criticize; it's harder to provide alternatives. Stories like this suggest to me that maybe we should start exploring some of those alternatives.
He recently updated his post with a link to some details and background from Edward Hasbrouck (who broke the story in the first place).