Question: all the nominees have been quoting about the privacy issues. what i would like to ask here is, if elected, will the board members have the power to really enforce those rules in the internet? eventhough rules are enforced, how can ICANN enforce its superiority to those organisations or individuals

Nominee Replies

Sureswaran Ramadass - posted on 2000-10-09 03:01:43 You are right in the sense a countries rules tend to over-ride ICANNs rules and laws. Like an earlier Netizen has asked, a set of global Internet Governance rules should be set in place and this should be put forth for all countries to accept. Masanobu Katoh - posted on 2000-10-04 13:06:35 ICANN's role is to coordinate the techical management of Internet Domain Names and IP numbers. It does not govern the Internet with specific mandated power. If your question refers to general privacy issues, it is not within ICANN's scope of activity except for privacy matters relating to the WHOIS database. This does not mean that ICANN has no power to implement its decisions or rules. For instance, ICANN can enforce the decisions made under the URDP through contractual arrangements with the parties of the dispute. Johannes Chiang - posted on 2000-10-04 08:40:23 I think this an important question for the ICANN director board. In my opinion, ICANN can not and should not enforce its superiority to organizations or individuals. In particularly, ICANN has until now no power to force the political regimes to act as ICANN proposes. Nevertheless, ICANN can contribute to a rational environment embracing policies and technical standards for domain name, IP and addressing which facilitates people to follow and self regulate. As I described in my answer to the privacy question, ICANN should develop guidelines/standards requiring that ccTLD ??espouse active measures and promote the adoption of guidelines/standards for self-regulation by the industry in the area of protecting privacy rights. This includes of course the instruments, as Dr. Ramadass described, to prevent large corporations to take advantage of the user by inserting code that will allow them to monitor the user or the applications in any way. I don't think ICANN can force a political regime which insists to censor Internet data to change their mind. I think the problem could only be solved with the awareness of the governments and their people. Regarding this, what ICANN could do is to introduce innovative technologies such as Mobile IP or something we do not know yet to lead us to a better stand.