ICANN Names Names

Five new board members have been elected, but voter turnout was low around the world.

by Patricia Fusco
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[October 11, 2000]

The e-votes were tallied late Tuesday in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers first election at large.

Five new board members will join ICANN's 19 others tasked with supervising the Internet's naming and addressing schemes. The organization's memberships of 76,000 Internet users were invited to participate in the e-mail election.

The representative for each region is:

Asia/Australia/Pacific: Masanobu Katoh

Europe: Andy Mueller-Maguhn

Latin America and Caribbean: Ivan Moura Campos

Africa: Nii Quaynor

North America: Karl Auerbach

Voter Turnout by Region
source: election.com

Karl Auerbach, a tenured Cisco Systems network architect won the seat for North America. A reformer, Auerbach ran a campaign that condemned current management, accusing ICANN of collusion with special interest groups. His full platform is available on his web page, here.

A German hacker and member of the Chaos Computer Club won the seat representing Europe. Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a student at the University of Berlin, currently works as a self-employed network security consultant.

Brazilian Ivan Moura Campos, Akwan Information Technologies chief executive officer, will represent Latin America and the Caribbean. Campos also serves as chairman of Brazil's Internet Steering Committee.

Japanese born Masanobu Katoh will represent Asia on the ICANN board, even though the Fujitsu engineer currently resides in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Nii Quaynor won the seat representing Africa. The resident of Ghana plans to organize an in-region grassroots institution to mobilize African participation in Internet issues and develop the continents burgeoning Web marketplace. O brave new world
From its base of operations in Marina del Rey, California, ICANN acts as a non-profit corporation responsible for domain name allocation, network management, and other technical issues that impact the global online community.

The group operates under an exclusive U.S. government contract granting ICANN eminent domain over the allocation of top-level domains commonly know as TLDs.

One of the expanded board's first tasks will be to determine the next series of top-level domains that will shape the future of the Internet. Domain name designations that may be added to the familiar .com, .net, and .org sub-domains include. ads, .club, .fun, .mad, .sucks and .war, as well as 75 other options.

ICANN's didactic chairperson Ester Dyson was appointed as one of the group's nine initial directors in October 1998. Dyson's leadership of ICANN routinely comes under attack, particularly for being swayed by dot-com corporations and special interest groups. The at-large election of regional board members was implemented to quiet this criticism.

Dyson has staunchly defended ICANN's ability to manage the Web on a worldwide scale in testimony before U.S. and foreign governments.

Put simply, if everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. Dyson cannot be accused of having a sinecure in that criticism is easy and it pours in endlessly.

The TLD controversy
The soon-to-be-announced top-level domain segments will most likely create and another outburst of unfavorable reviews for ICANN because someone's self-interest, somewhere, will be omitted from the collection of new Web name designations.

At the very least, the open election results mean that there will be five new board members available to defend the group's actions.

The debate over new top level domains is sure to reach a boiling point at ICANN's annual meeting scheduled to be held in mid-November.