TheWorldJournal.com - Technology

ICANN's First Global Online Election Rocks The World
By Dan Calloway, TheWorldJournal.com

The first truly global online election is taking place this week for the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's governing body. The decisions made by ICANN will ultimately affect every Windows and Internet user for years to come.

Internet Policy management was transferred in 1998 from universities to ICANN by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Commerce Department owns the Internet's central "root" server, which determines which other servers around the world are recognized.

The Commerce Department's contract with ICANN gives that organization the power to make policy regarding the root server. In turn, ICANN accredits registrars only after they sign legal contracts binding them to obey future ICANN rulings. When you register a domain name, you agree to abide by ICANN, too. It's possible you didn't read that part before you clicked OK.

Years ago, nations created the Law of the Sea to govern valuable ocean resources. Similarly, ICANN is now creating a "Law of the Internet" via its contracts.

As a result, the Internet is acquiring the legal status of a sovereign nation with its own laws and customs. Unfortunately the Internet is a new nation that lacks a Bill of Rights.

The most important task given to ICANN was to expand the Net beyond today's inadequate domain names, such as .com, .net, and .org. Rapid growth has created a need for unlimited new domain names, such as united.airlines, united.vanlines, united. grocers, and so on.

But, ICANN has dragged its feet. Some interest groups, heavily over-represented on the ICANN board of directors, profit from the current artificial scarcity of domain names. ICANN plans to allow a mere handful of new domain names.

This week ended an election online that has never been seen before. Candidates to the board at ICANN world-wide were nominated and placed before the world for Internet users to cast their votes.

The candidates' qualifications were available at web sites such as www.cdt.org/icann-election, www.cyber-federalist.org, and www.apc.org/english/rights/governance.

Internet users who registered to become ICANN At-Large members and who received PINs via the postal service, were able to logon at http://members.icann.org and vote for their candidate. Voting ended Oct. 10 and the results have been announced. You can visit ICANN's home website for the results.

© October 14, 2000

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