Again, I worry that the battle between nations is a mask for the real battle that is happening, and which we are losing, the ceding of power to large corporations.
I'm not worried about ICANN, here, I'm worried about Google. Specifically, now that ICANN is expanding top-level domains to include thousands of generics, the big players are going to make lots of grabs and become first-class citizens on the Internet. It is not better for the Internet if Google controls the .dev TLD and if Amazon controls the .shop TLD.
At the end of the day a democratic system of any kind is vulnerable to corruption from the influence of power and must actively defend against this influence. If ICANN is supposed to be a more democratic means of controlling the Internet than the US government, it has to be made invulnerable to the influence of large players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
I'm not worried about ICANN, here, I'm worried about Google. Specifically, now that ICANN is expanding top-level domains to include thousands of generics, the big players are going to make lots of grabs and become first-class citizens on the Internet. It is not better for the Internet if Google controls the .dev TLD and if Amazon controls the .shop TLD.
At the end of the day a democratic system of any kind is vulnerable to corruption from the influence of power and must actively defend against this influence. If ICANN is supposed to be a more democratic means of controlling the Internet than the US government, it has to be made invulnerable to the influence of large players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.