New poll: what 2007 will bring

I have stuck up a new poll today, pondering what will be the biggest Internet issue of 2007, and archiving the previous poll about ICANN’s planned report into domain names.

I asked ICANN’s chairman and CEO about where this report was up to at the end of the Sao Paulo meeting last week. They are still discussing it. But it will go out to a company in the same way that the LSE report was for the GNSO. Vint Cerf said he hope to have something concrete in place by the Lisbon meeting at the end of March.

Anyway, the results showed that a third of people are optimistic that the report will be “accurate, timely, a great help”. Just under a quarter have taken the more cynical-realistic attitude that it will be “fence-sitting and so useless”; while just over a fifth think it will be a complete waste of time and money.

I think that demonstrates a pretty good rundown of people’s attitudes toward ICANN at the moment. It also marks somewhat of a shift in trust in ICANN, most likely stemming from the fact that the LSE report of the GNSO was so good. I am certain if I had done the same poll before the LSE report, a very high proportion of people would have said it would be a waste of time and money.

Of course, this poll only covered the report itself and not the vital task of actually implementing the recommendations that result. The GNSO report was good but there are alot of people determined to maintain the status quo so we shall see if ICANN has the strength to push through the much-needed changes.

Anyway, those poll results in full:

ICANN’s independent report into domain names. Will it be:

* Accurate, timely, a great help (33%)
* Fence-sitting and so useless (24%)
* A waste of time and money (21%)
* A model for the future (14%)
* Naive and/or out of touch (7%)

Total Votes: 70