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takyon writes:

Mismanagement and greed continues to plague the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which doesn't know what to do with over $58 million it has collected from gTLD auctions.

The International Centre For Dispute Resolution (ICDR) has issued a ruling that says ICANN has acted in a way "fundamentally inconsistent with the requirements in ICANN's Bylaws for it to act openly, transparently, fairly and with integrity." The ruling relates to an ICANN dispute with DotConnectAfrica, which wants to manage the .africa gTLD. The ICDR has demanded that two ICANN officials, Cherine Chalaby and Heather Dryden, appear at a Washington D.C. hearing to answer questions. However, ICANN has other plans:

How can the Panel ensure that the parties to this [Independent Review Panel] are treated with equality and that each party has the right to be heard and is given a fair opportunity to present its case with respect to the mandate the Panel has been given, if as ICANN submits, "ICANN's Bylaws do not permit any examination of witnesses by the parties or the Panel during the hearing"?

The Register notes that "the issue is of particular interest at the moment since ICANN is going through a formal process of review on its accountability before it is allowed to take control of the critical IANA contract from the US government." In fact, the Senate's Judiciary Committee has told the White House's "IP Czar" Daniel Marti that "there are longstanding concerns within both the business community and the Congress regarding ICANN's transparency and accountability mechanisms with respect to its existing functions and responsibilities." Specifically, intellectual property concerns such as "the 'whack-a-mole' problem that plagues copyright holders online, where illegal content or sites are taken down only to spring back up again moments later in a new location." Meanwhile, ICANN has spent $7 million in an attempt to secure the IANA contract, raised staff wages 10% over two years to a new average of $187,000, and expanded its travel budget by 85% to $17 million in just a single year.

Finally, ICANN has confirmed that misconfigured Salesforce software resulted in at least 330 instances where confidential information about 96 gTLD applicants was exposed:

ICANN said it realizes that "any compromise of our users' data is unacceptable," and that it "deeply regrets this incident." It pledged "to accelerate our efforts to harden all of our digital services."

Incredibly, however, it appears to place blame on the [19] users that used the advanced search feature: "ICANN is contacting the user or users who appear to have viewed information that was not their own and requiring that they provide an explanation of their activity. We are also asking them to certify that they will delete or destroy all information obtained and to certify that they have not and will not use the data or convey it to any third party."