Question: What is your stand on regulation and taxation of Internet Telephony or any of the methods of providing voice or video over the Internet?

Nominee Replies

Barbara Simons - posted on 2000-10-01 21:50:35 I am opposed to singling out Internet Telephony for taxation. Voice and video on the Internet should be treated the same as any string of 0's and 1's. Karl Auerbach - posted on 2000-09-24 22:09:59 (As an aside - I'm answering this question while standing next to a very large array of voice-over-IP equipment from many different vendors.) Anyway - as for as VOIP goes - it is out of scope for ICANN - ICANN has no authority over VOIP. Donald Langenberg - posted on 2000-09-24 11:52:24 I haven't developed one yet -- and am unlikely to unless I win this election. Then I expect I'll have to.. Emerson Tiller, J.D., Ph.D. - posted on 2000-09-22 16:29:03 I generally believe that ICANN should stay out of the business of taxation, whether it be for telephony or any other methods of providing voice or video over the Internet. However, if telephony/voice/video in some way imposes demands on the infrastructure that ICANN manages, then appropriate regulation/taxation to cover those costs may be merited. But I don't currently see that happening and I would need input from the technologists to understand this possibility better than I do currently. My preference is to let ICANN do its revenue generation in another way, not through taxation of the Internet. In terms of whether national governments should tax internet telephony/voice/video, that is an issue outside ICANN's responsibilities. Harris Miller - posted on 2000-09-22 06:26:41 Regulators and taxing authorities will always seek to expand their reach. The Net is merely the most recent example. As important as these issues are, however, they fall outside ICANN's purview. I would oppose efforts to involve ICANN. Lawrence Lessig - posted on 2000-09-22 05:04:50 As a candidate for the board of ICANN, I have no view on these matters. ICANN is not a taxing authority, nor a regulator of particular technologies. As a U.S. citizen, I believe the government has a role in assuring that the architecture remain open, and I would only support regulation to assure that. And once an architecture that sufficiently protects the privacy of the purchaser is in place, I believe that transactions in cyberspace will, and should, be taxed just as their equivalents in real space are. Lyman Chapin - posted on 2000-09-21 19:19:03 In the short term, Internet applications invite regulation and taxation the more they look like traditional applications that are already regulated and taxed (such as telephony). Although I believe that the regulation and taxation of voice and video on the Internet are important policy issues, I don't think that ICANN has any role to play in resolving them.