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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The founding chairwoman of the Internet's governing institution explains why we have to work with what we've got, even if it isn't perfect.
Jul 25, 2002 | As the founding chair of ICANN, Esther Dyson has enjoyed one of the better vantage points from which to view the near constant controversy that has embroiled the governing institution of the Internet since its inception.
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is an international organization entrusted, originally by the U.S. Department of Commerce, with the job of overseeing the allocation of Internet domain names. Critics of ICANN argue that it is overly secretive, beholden only to itself, and far too willing to allow corporate trademark holders to stake their own intellectual property claims in cyberspace at the expense of everyone else. Critics are also alarmed at ICANN's resistance to allowing the direct election of board members by the general population.
On July 2, Salon published an interview with John Gilmore, a software entrepreneur and longtime Internet visionary, that called for the outright abolition of ICANN. Gilmore is also helping to fund a lawsuit by Karl Auerbach, a popularly elected ICANN board member, that is demanding access to ICANN's financial books.
In response to the Gilmore interview, Salon received an angry letter from ICANN's chief counsel, Joe Sims, and was also approached by Esther Dyson, who sought an opportunity to explain some of the "nuances" of ICANN's operations.
What's your current involvement in ICANN?
My current involvement is after I stopped being chairman they created something called the At Large Study Committee, and I was invited to join that, but I wasn't chairman of it. It was chaired by Carl Bildt, who's the former prime minister of Sweden. Part of the issue is that the At Large program gets ... its strongest voices from Americans. And in a group like ICANN, Americans are insiders -- so it was important that the chairperson not be another American.
One of the biggest issues is voting for board members. And let's get real. The ICANN board at this point, right or wrong, is simply not going to accept that. Which to my mind is unfortunate because we have elected At Large board members and they're by and large reasonable people -- other than Karl Auerbach -- who unfortunately has some good proposals and it's counterproductive how he goes around trying to achieve that.
Why do you think it's such a non-starter to have elected members?
I do not agree with that but that's the board's position. ICANN exists. It's got a contract with the U.S. government. And you can disagree with them violently and say I don't want to have anything to do with them, or you can say, as I do, hey, I want to change this thing and I want to fix it. And I accept the reality that I'm not going to ask for the impossible, but I'm going to try to do two things. I want to change the attitudes of the ICANN board and help foster an At Large organization that will help them to change their minds because it turns out to be a reasonable and constructive organization that provides useful input. At Large users have a role in the governance of ICANN. But the question is how to make that constructive rather than incoherent, and how to get ICANN to listen.
