Question: Who do you think makes up the current at large membership? Are you concerned that it has been captured by business, intellectual property interests, and technologists? Do you care? -- Emerson Tiller, ICANN Candidate

Nominee Replies

Harris Miller - posted on 2000-10-10 10:31:03 Who do you think makes up the current at large membership? I do not know. The names of the voters is not available. And even if it were, we would have no way as candidates of knowing the demographics of those voters. Are you concernced that it has been captured by business, intellectual property interests, or technologists? I do not know how one captures a wide open system. Unless you have some evidence that the process for registering voters was improperly restricted to favor one group or another, I have to wonder why you keep raising this issue. Based on the wide ranging issues that have been raised in the large number of emails we have all received, the electorate seems to encompass a wide variety of views and backgrounds. Do you care? I care if the voting registration system was biased against some group. ICANN has already committed to conduct a post-election review of the process, which should indicate if there were any such bias. I have seen no evidence of such, however. Emerson Tiller, J.D., Ph.D. - posted on 2000-10-08 21:13:09 Thanks to my fellow candidates for their responses to my question. Barbara Simons - posted on 2000-10-04 12:36:32 This is an important question. We may be able to infer the answer when we see who wins the election, but we may not. Based on your comments during the debates at Harvard, I understand your concern that some special interests have encouraged their members and members' employees to register and vote for a specific candidate. Unfortunately, neither of us has any way of knowing at the present time if such an effort was attempted and if it was successful. My hope is that the user community will vote in large numbers and will elect a candidate who will defend their interests. Lyman Chapin - posted on 2000-10-04 08:00:57 I don't know who the current at large members are, but I would expect many of them to be people who don't feel that their interests and concerns are adequately represented by any of the supporting organizations. Yes, I care whether or not the at-large membership has been captured by interests that are already represented by the SOs, but I don't have any reason to think that it has (and certainly hope that it has not). Lawrence Lessig - posted on 2000-10-04 03:33:21 I don't worry so much about the board being captured by technologists, if by that you mean IETF types. I like their ethic, and there is plenty technical the organization must review. I do worry about the board being captured by people who have a financial stake in a certain kind of internet, or who would like to use ICANN to help create a certain kind of intellectual property regime. That is the greatest danger facing ICANN at the moment.