Tilting at ICANN

Karl Auerbach, elected to the Internet domain-name authority with a mandate from the people, explains why he is suing his own organization.

By Damien Cave

Mar 19, 2002 | Karl Auerbach began his tenure at ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, with a mild sense of optimism. By the time he joined the board of directors in November 2000, the nonprofit -- the controlling authority over the allocation and administration of Internet domain names -- had already earned a reputation for ineptitude and closed-door policies that favor corporate interests. But as one of five board members (out of 19) elected at large by the general public, Auerbach intended to guide ICANN toward reform.

Auerbach's hopes have not been realized. In February, ICANN CEO and president M. Stuart Lynn proposed a massive overhaul of the organization -- a shift of power away from public input toward national governments. At a meeting in Accra, Ghana, last week, ICANN agreed to go along, suspending at-large elections until further notice.

Auerbach -- a founder of several software companies who also spent time protesting the Vietnam War -- isn't ready to fold his tent yet, however. On Monday, he sued the organization he represents. He filed charges in California Superior Court against ICANN for withholding financial information in violation of a state law that gives directors "the absolute right at any reasonable time to inspect and copy all books, records and documents of every kind."

ICANN officials couldn't be reached for comment.

Salon chatted with Auerbach about the case and other ICANN-related matters.

You've been trying to see ICANN's financial records for a while. What led you to file a lawsuit?

I made my first request to see the financials within five minutes of my election to the board. ... I submitted written requests. They went off and hemmed and hawed and said they'd have to write procedures and send it to such-and-such committees. ICANN has a committee structure that makes the U.S. government look simple.

But nothing happened and I wrote more letters. Then, eventually, finally, around September, I get, out of the blue, this set of procedures, which Stuart Lynn simply declared by fiat to be applicable to all directors.

What were the procedures and why didn't you comply?

No. 1, they were unlawful in that they put conditions on me, which impaired my ability to make independent judgments. I essentially have to ask the approval of management to see certain documents. They go cogitate and then tell me whether I can see them. And they place conditions on my use of that material. They call it a nondisclosure, but it really amounts to conditional use.

So there are two parts to this: First, I'd have to sign the general agreement; then there would be additional conditions when I showed up at the door. To do this would be to abrogate my duties as a director. It would be contrary to my duty as a director to sign the agreement.

And what's really interesting is that through all of this process -- with Stuart piling more and more procedures on me -- he responded, out of the blue, to one of my requests. It was a request for fairly innocuous information -- I wanted the logs of international travel of all officers and executives for all international travel not pertaining to a board meeting -- but nevertheless he felt free to dispense with all of these procedures [and give me the logs] with just the wave of his hand. So he's playing fast and loose with these procedures.

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