Embracing the rhetoric of privatization, the DNS White Paper called for the creation of a private nonprofit corporation to take over the DNS and institute various reforms. Most people seem to think this was a good thing. It also rejected 35 other applications. The selection process was very controversial , and some of the losing applicants are protesting . Democratic theory suggests that the absence of accountability tends to breed arbitrariness and self-dealing.
Ordinary corporations have shareholders and competitors.
Many nonprofit organizations have members who can challenge corporate misbehavior. The result is a body that, to date, has been subject to minimal accountability. It is likewise unclear what precisely giving away control would consist of beyond DoC s interest in its contracts with the maintainer of the root, since the most important part of anyone s control over the root is publishing data that other parties, many of whom are independent of the government, choose to rely on.