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TechnologyDaily Mobile
ICANN: Taking Things One Step At A Time
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is still in its childhood and showing it. Created to handle Internet space and name issues, almost every move it makes is considered experimental and creates a buzz among an extended family of onlookers and experts. Questions have arisen concerning its activities after a rocky board election last week and a controversial application process for new top-level domain names. Net governance issues will be the subject of a six-month at-large membership study period. Editor's Note: This passage was originally published on Oct. 16, but was changed Oct. 20 for clarification.
"We're not ready for prime time yet," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), after the elections.
The Formation
ICANN was formed in October 1998 by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic and user communities as a non-profit, private sector corporation to cope with issues relating to IP address space, domain name assignment and management and root servers.
The ICANN board consists of 19 directors, including nine at-large directors and nine chosen by ICANN's three supporting organizations, and the president/CEO (ex-officio). The nine current at-large directors are charter members and will be succeeded by at-large directors selected by the body's at-large membership. Last week's election brings five new at-large directors from around the world who will take office at the close of the next board meeting in mid-November.
The three supporting organizations are the address (ASO), domain name (DNSO) and protocol (PSO) supporting organizations. The ASO manages the IP address system; the DNSO handles the giving of commonly recognized names for Internet locations, and the PSO deals with the standards that let computers communicate with each other. Each of these entities appoints three members to the ICANN board for three-year terms.
The possibility that ICANN will try to expand its mandate has sent chills through the Internet community. "The general view is that [people] don't want ICANN to broaden the scope of its mandate," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). But there is "absolutely" the danger of that happening, he warned.
Learning Experiences In Digital Democracy
Several areas of concern about ICANN arose as debate topics during the at-large election. For instance, some questioned ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, which allows the use of several existing forums such as the World Intellectual Property Organization to settle disputes over domain names. Critics have said that policy was not developed through democratic means and have called for its reauthorization after the at-large elections.
Another widespread doubt was the policy of charging $50,000 to a company that wished to register a new top level domain (TLD) name and other issues relating to ICANN's future funding. Some argued that the TLDs should be given away on a first-come, first-serve basis, while others thought they should go to the highest bidder since they may be worth far more. Karl Auerbach, the elected North American representative, said in one questionnaire during the campaign, "it is clear to me that we can readily have at least a million TLDs without any technical problems."
ICANN reported Friday that 44 of the 47 applications received for new TLDs are still active. The applicants are from all over the world and put bids on a multitude of domain names such as .nom, .pro, .biz, .sports, .health and .sex, according to a list on the ICANN Web site.
Areas For Improvement
Looking at the election, Berman pointed to areas ripe for improvement, including security, registration, jurisdiction and monitoring. But he emphasized the importance of the elections, calling it "just as important as any congressional election we could have. This is a major institution being developed here."
Scott Harshbarger, president of Common Cause, and Zoe Baird, head of the Markle Foundation, which provided funding for the election, both gently criticized the process in a post-election conference call that also was attended by Berman. Harshbarger pointed to the future challenge of ensuring the elections are fair and open, but defended the current board as "in some way" representing the public. "It's very important to remember that a year ago there was not going to be an election at all," he said.
Baird called the election an "important experiment" but "by no means a substitute" for a fully functioning process for electing representatives. The election broke new ground for a decentralized field that does not fit normal parameters, she noted. Rotenberg seconded the notion of an important experiment, but added that it succeeded in raising public awareness and in increasing civil society involvement.
The Voting Process
The election ran from Oct. 1-10 with 34,035 of the more than 76,000 registered voters worldwide casting votes. The winners for the five regions were: Karl Auerbach (North America), Masanobu Katoh (Asia/Australia), Nii Quaynor (Africa), Ivan Moura Campos (Latin America/Caribbean), and Andy Mueller-Maguhn (Europe). The five-continent representation was intended to spread the influence beyond the user-heavy United States. Turnout was uneven, with just 67 of a total 130 African voters weighing in for Quaynor, and less than a third of registered voters in the United States actually voting. More than half of all votes were cast in Asia, 17,745, and Europe had the highest percentage turnout, at 48 percent.
Election.com, the company conducting the election, noted that the turnout, about 45 percent overall, was "significantly higher" than other private sector elections, which usually are around 15 percent. Election.com experienced problems at the outset when the encryption technique blocked 2,800 registered voters who had received personal identification numbers in the mail from submitting their votes. The company rectified the situation before the voting period expired and 2,685 of those people returned to the site and successfully cast their vote, it said.
Reaction From Candidates
North American runner-up Barbara Simons said ICANN received criticism for not extending the voting period after the early glitch, especially since it had previously extended the period for endorsements of candidates. She also noted that people's inability to register for the election would have been treated harshly if this were a state election. "There would be hell to pay for that," she said in an interview. She said ICANN did not expect such a high turnout and ran over projected costs by mailing the PIN numbers first class to each registrant.
But Simons, the lone woman of the seven North American candidates, was conciliatory about the election overall. She offered congratulations to Auerbach, a Cisco researcher, who holds similar views. "Karl is going to be interesting because he has been one of the most outspoken critics of ICANN," she said. "In all fairness, they were doing something for the first time." Asked how she felt about the election, Simons, with laryngitis and busily preparing for a trip to give a keynote speech in Korea, said "it was a lot of work. Now I know what it's like to be a guinea pig."
Simons, former ACM president, also criticized ICANN for creating a "false scarcity" of domain names in order to help those trademark interests. "There are ways of dealing with this," she said, likening the situation to that of the early days of radio, when people were still optimistic the airwaves could be unlimited.
Emerson Tiller, another North American candidate, made several suggestions in an e-mail for a better election process. He said there should be only member-nominated candidates (not board-nominated) and a longer registration period. He also felt that the general Internet-using public was underrepresented, which could be changed through a better public information campaign.
He echoed others' calls for more TLDs and recommended an auction system, which he said is "more efficient, more fair and will relieve ICANN of any arbitrary decision-making on who should get control over a TLD."
Experts say it will be difficult for critics such as Auerbach and Mueller-Maguhn of Germany to have a profound impact on the 19-member board. "No one doubts the veracity or ferocity of Auerbach's views toward ICANN," said Rotenberg. "But he will have to work with the other members."
 | - by William New |
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