As the U.S. untethers its “.coms” from public-sector control, Canadians should ask themselves what they’re getting for their “.ca” dollar.

Two big things are happening today with the internet. You know those addresses you type into your web browser, like “themarknews.com”? They all must be translated to numbers so your computer can find them – for instance, themarknews.com is 67.23.4.225.

The organization that runs the translation software for domains – such as .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc. – is called ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a non-profit monopoly based in California, originally set up by the U.S. government exactly 10 years ago this week. Tomorrow, Sept. 30, their agreement runs out and they will be “set free” from U.S. government involvement, becoming a truly private entity responsible to no one but their “stakeholders.”

There's a lot of fuss about this, with the UN, the European Union, and countries such as China wanting some control of ICANN. In Canada, we have a similar entity called CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority), responsible for administering nearly 1.3 million domain names ending in “.ca.” This week (up to Wednesday, September 30, at 12 p.m. EST) registered “.ca” domain-name owners can vote for the board of CIRA, one way we Canadians can influence what is happening with ICANN.

I am on the CIRA board of directors, having been elected last year for a one-year term. The past year has been an eye-opener, and has inspired me to run again for a full three-year term to figure out what is going on at CIRA and to make it more responsive to the public interest. Keep in mind, CIRA is a monopoly, receiving $8.50 (wholesale) for every .ca name. That's over $10 million a year.

The CIRA board is dominated by corporate interests, yet most Canadians are not using the internet to make money. They use it for communication and sharing. For instance, I run science.ca, a free website with the simple idea of promoting Canadian science. The vast majority of internet users just want to share information and files for free, yet they are poorly represented by CIRA.

Back in the early 1990s, science.ca was obtained with a simple email and phone call to a computer technician at UBC who ran the .ca database for free. For almost a decade .ca names were free, but starting around 1999 they suddenly cost up to $50 per year, depending on where you bought them.

Should you even have to pay? I admire the philosophical approach to internet services that Craig Newmark, the creator of Craigslist espouses. Keep in mind that Craigslist is run by only 25 people – CIRA has a staff of over 40 – and while CIRA maintains a handful of computer servers, Craigslist has servers in 450 cities and they charge virtually nothing. When asked why he does not use Craigslist to make fortunes, Newmark said in a recent Wired Magazine interview, “That has never been a goal ... We have been fortunate to do well by doing good … by focusing only on improving the service for users.” My question is: Why can't CIRA follow the Craigslist model? Instead CIRA follows a classical corporate MBA model. Some things such as schools, churches, hospitals, and Domain Name Services should not be treated as businesses. CIRA is a public service, not a business.

Hundreds of thousands of people or organizations have registered .ca domain names. Of those, about 18,000 have registered to become CIRA members, and only about 1,500 vote in CIRA elections. While numbers of .ca domain name owners increase at the rate of about 14 per cent per year, the numbers of those who vote continually go down. It's too late now to register to vote in the current election, but if you have a .ca domain name, and if you are a registered member, please vote.

Last year only 500 voted.

Every year, CIRA’s annual report shows a net surplus of up to $2 million. What is CIRA doing with its rapidly growing pile of cash? And why does it keep growing if CIRA is non-profit? CIRA has a government mandate in addition to maintaining the Domain Name System, to “support other internet-related activities in Canada,” but does very little. It's time CIRA began giving back to Canadians.

While the internet is used in a limited sense for shopping, the dominant use is sharing. Hence CIRA's monies might go towards improving and supporting online sharing activities (email, chat, forums, files, telephony, video, etc.), not just shopping, banking, and other commercial interests.

Ultimately, I'd like to see CIRA lobby the federal government to create a free National Communication Care program, analogous to our National Health Care program. Every Canadian should have a right to internet access, and this should be paid by tax dollars. There are great opportunities for internet development in Canada that are being missed because of corporate greed. While Canada was once the world leader in telecommunications, we have now fallen far behind much of the rest of the world partly because of the focus on corporate needs over the public interest. National communication networks such as the internet are public resources and they should be as free as our nation's highways, so vote for change on the CIRA board.

You have less than 24 hours.