You get what you negotiate for, not what you deserve

Other hot resolutions included the deferring of the .xxx decision to the next meeting which will be held in Brussels.

Supporters of the .xxx initiative have held that the board has been acting in a discriminatory manner, even ignoring its own committee on this resolution.

The board devoted a lot of attention to trademark interests at the expense of market diversity, some said, as most of the resolutions passed refer to various aspects of how to protect trademark owners from the horrifying prospect of letting people register names under new TLDs.

This against the reality of cyber squatting which has seen many companies lose their trademarks and forced to pay hefty prices to cyber squatters to reclaim them.

One thing I learnt at the ICANN meeting is that you will never get what you deserve, only what you negotiate for.

Lobbying and open talks on what the internet should be is all what ICANN is.

Hare is a director at the African eDevelopment Resource Centre, a training and consulting firm based in Nairobi. Follow him on Twitter@hareharry