Question: ICANN's role is small and limited right now. Do you want to maintain this limited role as it is, or to let the ICANN have a wider mandate and be a governing force in the future?

Nominee Replies

Sureswaran Ramadass - posted on 2000-09-29 06:37:57 ICANN should have a wider mandate, but should also involve other organizations to assist with the decision making process. Lulin Gao - posted on 2000-09-28 02:55:20 I believe the reasonable approach is to maintain its current status without expanding the role of ICANN. As regards the issues as to whether its role should be expanded and how its role should be expanded depend on how ICANN can fulfill and perform its existing functions and duties under its charter as well as the demand of circumstances. The most important principle is to continuously retain the openness, transparent, consensus-based, bottom-up and private characteristics in its process. In any event, ICANN should not be developed into another bureaucratic body with too much powers similar to a governmental agency. Masanobu Katoh - posted on 2000-09-26 14:17:56 ICANN has tremendous possibility. Although its mission is limited to technical management of the Internet domain names and IP numbers (and I do not think it is ideal to expand it, at least for a moment), the way it solves and decides issues is a very good and practical model for many other global policy issues. For instance, the online dispute resolution mechanism can be used for other issues such as those relating to privacy protection and consumer contracts. (Again I am not proposing that ICANN should be handling such maters, but just suggesting that such system or idea can be used for many other disputes.) Therefore, I encourage everyone to participate in ICANN activities. Johannes Chiang - posted on 2000-09-25 19:05:48 No matter what ICANN going to be, the most important issue for ICANN is let people decide, and let people know all the decision process. The decision process should be open and transparent.