As I have intimated before, ICANN’s CEO, M. Stuart Lynn, is not my favorite person. I had the misfortune of going up against him in his professional capacity many years ago, and I actually met him on several occasions. It would not be an exaggeration to say that each of those meetings still ranks high in the list of the top ten worst moments of my life. Towards the end of the whole sordid experience, he became such an unmitigated power-hungry asshole that a judge finally told him to back the fuck off and shut the fuck up.
It is therefore with no small amount of glee that I link to this article on ICANNWatch: ICANN Bids Adieu to Lynn and McLaughlin, in which we learn that M. Stuart Lynn is retiring (please please please tell me he was forced out), and, even less surprisingly, that no one will fucking miss him.
Lynn indulged himself in a one-man orgy of frustrated ambition called “ICANN — The Case for Reform.” … [I]ts substance made it painfully clear that ICANN was intent — indeed, bent — on reading possible compromises as signs that its ‘opponents’ were caving in.
That Lynn could, in one fell swoop, set ICANN back so badly was impressive in itself; but that he could do so while arguing that ICANN’s worst traits — bloat, cronyism, and opacity — should be the guideposts for its future development was sheer folly.
