ICANN At Large Nomination Application

At Large Candidate Page

Marc Lehmann

Email	icann@plan9.de
Region	Europe

PROFESSIONAL
Employer(s)
1. nethype GmbH, Germany; 2. Independent IT Consulter; (self-employed); 3. University of Karlsruhe;
QUALIFICATIONS
Statement addressing the candidates qualifications and experience specifically relevant to (a) ICANN's technical and administrative responsibilities, and (b) your leadership and policy-level roles.
My qualifications are mostly technical: I am an administrator for several large networks with and without internet gateway nodes. I am an expert on internet security and internet protocols, which I actively research (mainly for the free software community, but also for my own company). Working for an ISP I set policy rules for both commercial and private end-users, so I know the trade-off between technical possibiilites and social limits. Policitally I am member of a few committees (e.g. the GNU Compiler Collection Steering Committee) and do know the differences between political and technical decisions very well.
ICANN RELATED INTERESTS
ICANN-related interests, including: (a) Employment and consulting relationships (b) Ownership or investment interests in any ICANN-related businesses (c) Official positions in any ICANN-related businesses or organizations
I have no material ICANN-related interests.
BACKGROUND
Background information, personal statement, URL, or other information you would like posted in connection with your name on the ICANN website.
Why I think I am qualified? My technical expertise is not limited to a single area, rather I was and am working in a lot of independent but internet-related areas and my knowledge is very broad. Thus I think I have a good overview about the internet and it's technical implementation(s) as a whole, which is important for any work touching such a large system as the Internet. In addition to my mere technical qualifications, I am involved in political work regarding software implementations of internet protocols, designing internet protocols for security (which is not entirely a technical problem) and researching policy for social interaction. Working extensively in the free software community for many years gave me the vision of freedom in technical decisions, which I want to achieve. What are my intentions for becoming a ICANN member? My intentions are three-fold: 1. Data protection for everybody will become a predominant topic in the future, and I will do my best to enhance protection for the individual. I am convinced that data protection is one of the most important rights for the individual and must not be sacrified ever as it ensures freedom of speech. 2. In the past, the internet served commercial as well as non-commercial interests relatively well. I am afraid that the ICANN might become overly commercialized, and I want to be a definite force against this. My strong background in free software makes me well aware of commercial and political pressures, and, despite having founded an Internet company, I will serve the ICANN totally independent from any commercial or political interests. 3. I want to ensure that both protocols and high-level access will be as transparent and independent of any single organizations interests as they ever were. In the past, internet protocols were easy to implement for anybody, independent of platform, company and origin and never disadvantaged any party. This ensured easy accessibility for end-users all over the world. I will fight any trends to change this and monopolize services or protocols. You can reach for at icann@plan9.de for any questions you might have. (See also http://icann.plan9.de/)
OFFICIAL STATUS
Status as an official of a national government or a multinational entity established by treaty or other agreement between national governments, such as an elected official or employee of a government or multinational entity.
I am not an official of any government.