Question: Are there mechanisms in place for review of ICANN's decisions? Separately, to whom *should* ICANN be accountable? Do options exist between accountable to nobody and accountable to every state and national government in the world? Neither extreme seems particularly palatable. Thanks to all for taking questions.

Nominee Replies

Donald Langenberg - posted on 2000-10-01 20:24:34 To the first question, I don't know. To the second, the fundamental reality is that ICANN has a role in making the Internet work well for everybody. That means that ICANN should in principle be accountable to everybody. The optimum mechanism for providing that accountability, it seems to me, is some reasonable version of what I would call participatory democracy. Designing that reasonable version is a challenge, but not a challenge unique to ICANN. Every organization and institution in the U.S. has to find a way to meet that challenge, from the local volunteer fire department to the federal government. Barbara Simons - posted on 2000-10-01 15:17:56 For all practical purposes, ICANN has not been accountable for its actions. My hope is that this and future elections will increase ICANN's accountability by making ICANN somewhat democratic. Your vote is very important in this process. If you wish to increase ICANN's accountability, then vote for those candidates who have called for increased openness and responsiveness to the needs and concerns of the community. You can order your choices 1, 2, 3, .... If your first choice gets the fewest number of voting in the first round, your vote is redistributed to your number 2 choice, etc. Therefore, if you support any progressive candidate, please be sure to include all of us in your top few selections. Emerson Tiller, J.D., Ph.D. - posted on 2000-09-29 18:19:47 There are few mechanisms in place for review of ICANN decisions. I have proposed that at least the arbitration decisions over domain name disputes be accountable to an ICANN appeals board. Otherwise, we get great inconsistencies across ICANN arbitrator decisions (some finding protest sites to be cybersquatting, others finding protest sites to be legitimate use; some finding generic domain names to violate trademark rights, others finding the opposite). In terms of whether ICANN decisions should be accountable to nobody v. everybody, I think ICANN should accountable to everyone in some way. The best way is to have an at-large membership that represents society more broadly than it currently does. The at-large membership currently is dominated by technologists and intellectual property interests -- two groups that have plenty of influence through other supporting organizations within ICANN. Harris Miller - posted on 2000-09-29 12:26:01 ICANN is a private non-profit corporation. Its policies therefore do not have the effect of law, particularly internationally. Theoretically, it could be subject to the jurisdiction of other nations. ICANN began as an experiment in private self governance. I think the jury is still out on that experiment and these elections are part of the story whether ICANN lives up to its potential. Lyman Chapin - posted on 2000-09-28 18:54:34 ICANN's decisions have no supra-national force of law, so every recognized legal jurisdiction in the world is a potential venue for review. One of the goals of the ICANN experiment is to determine whether or not ICANN can achieve sufficient legitimacy to operate with practical accountability to its declared Internet community constituency (including the at-large membership and the groups represented by the supporting organizations) rather than to national governments. We don't yet know if this goal is achievable. Lawrence Lessig - posted on 2000-09-26 23:19:19 There is an independent review process established to assure an additional level of accountability. That serves an important function to assure ICANN lives up to its charter. But the most important ongoing guarantee is the at-large process. ICANN is apparently skeptical about the value of the at-large process. I believe it is crucial to providing an adequate check on the ICANN board. Karl Auerbach - posted on 2000-09-26 20:20:54 ICANN must be accountable to the internet community. Who is this community? To my mind it is every person who is affected by the existance of the Internet. Essentially this is every person. As to the meaning of accountable - see my comments on this in my platform: http://www.cavebear.com/ialc/platform.htm#open-trans As I see it, the ICANN of today is accountable to exactly one person - the Attorney General of the State of California. Much of the money that ICANN has spent, and which it has indicated that it will recover via membership fees on the at-large, has been spent in a quest to make sure that ICANN is not accountable to anyone other than the California AG.