Mercury News | 06/28/2002 | ICANN leaves ordinary surfer high and dry

ICANN wants to show it can "reform". It did this by:

1. Getting rid of the popular election (via online balloting) of individual Internet users, and

2. Imposing a 25 cent tax on new domains.

Apparently, ICANN subscribes to the same sort of "reform" policies as the IMF and World Bank. ICANN is evil, but you knew that. People are also concerned that it's controlled by Americans. Their response:

The board said a reformed ICANN would work to include input from the lesser-developed Net regions, including Africa and the Middle East.

I figure they begin by imposing a thousand-dollar surcharge on all .il domain names.