Question: What do you see as the future internet say 10 years from now [or longer]... and how would opening or closing ICANN policy-making affect that vision? Should I care? Will it make a difference? Are there any alternatives?

Nominee Replies

Barbara Simons - posted on 2000-10-05 15:45:28 This is the billion dollar question. I see two distinct paths that we could take. The positive one is that the Internet will be a liberating medium in which all voices can be heard and everyone with the financial means will be able to participate. The negative one is that the Internet will look quite a bit like television or radio today, that it will be dominated by commercial interests, and that the little guy will be silenced. I am sure you asked this question because you do care. Assuming that ICANN continues to exist, it is highly likely that the decisions made by ICANN will have a major impact in determining which path we end up taking. I am running for the Board precisely because I am very worried that the Internet will be tamed, tied, and turned into a giant e-store. Donald Langenberg - posted on 2000-09-24 13:45:11 A big question, perhaps THE big question! The Internet is simply the current manifestion of a pervasive global electronic neural system that will change every aspect of our society and lives as did the development of railroads and automobiles a century ago. Nobody can hope to see the consequences precisely or accurately, and nobody can control or prevent them. In that big picture ICANN has a miniscule but important role to play, and it's important to get it right. It will make a difference, and, yes, you should care. Lyman Chapin - posted on 2000-09-21 17:28:44 I don't think anyone can predict what the Internet will be like 10 years (or even 5 years) from now, but opening or closing ICANN policy-making will definitely make a difference, if only because the quality of ICANN policy-making depends on having the richest possible gene pool of contributors. You should care, because the precedents that are established today and over the next few years will set the stage for whatever Internet governance becomes. Harris Miller - posted on 2000-09-18 06:15:04 As a Board Member, I would not want to try and predict the future of the Net. I do know that we are just at the beginning of the S curve and the discontinuous change of the past few years is only a foretaste of innovation to come. All the more reason that ICANN needs to succeed in the coming months. You definitley should care about ICANN policy making, and how ICANN goes about its job. The Net we have today is in large part the result of a minimalist governmental/policy intervention role. Certainly we all know the role government support played. But on the policy side, the Net has benefitted from a hands off approach. Whether one traces this back to the 1983 Access Charge Order or to other decisions, the Net prospered as it remained outside the interference of government policy bureaucracy. That is why ICANN should remain focused on its narrow and specific mandate. It would be ironic and sad for the Net to have grown and developed free from regulation and other policy burdens only to encounter a policy bureaucracy via ICANN. And that is why it is important to you how and why ICANN makes policy decisions. It is tempting for some to try and enact their policy agenda on privacy and other issues through ICANN. But the organization is not designed for such forays, and as a practical matter they would be ill-advised in any event. This is not to say that ICANN is a model for all private sector governance approaches to the Net. I agree that a cookie cutter approach is probably not the best way to proceed. ICANN was created in a specific time under specific circumstances. With the proper commitment from Board Members and the user community, I believe that ICANN can succeed. Emerson Tiller, J.D., Ph.D. - posted on 2000-09-17 19:47:03 I don't know what the Internet will look like 10 years from now and I would not try to determine that as a Board Member. The Internet is a dynamic evolutionary medium that finds much of its direction on its own. ICANN should limit itself to providing a platform of policy-technology commitments that enable, not disable, change. Opening ICANN policy-making -- in the sense of making it transparent and accessible to a broad range of constituencies -- would enlighten the board, legitimize the decision making process, and give fair notice to the innovating Internet community about any policy structures that help or hurt their opportunities and goals. Should you care? Yes. Internet users should care about how their use of, and opportunities on, the Internet are determined in part by policy making bodies like ICANN. Will it make a difference? I'm hoping it will. Alternatives? We could let individual countries (including the U.S.) make all their own Internet/DNS policy decisions outside the shadow of an institution like ICANN. I suspect, however, that nationalist prejudice, tit-for-tat issue linkage between nations, and ideological extremism would play itself out over Internet issues to a greater extent if ICANN were absent, than if ICANN were present. Lawrence Lessig - posted on 2000-09-13 23:57:43 Karl's insight is exactly right, and reflects a central principle of the internet -- that you avoid institutions and structures that can block innovation. The net built that as an architectural principle (end-to-end), and Karl is completely right to emphasize it as a value that ICANN must respect: The future depends upon how strongly we embed the value of defended innovation. ICANN has a role in this. Karl is right about the trademark issues, but the problem is deeper. ICANN has required that every domain name contract follow the same arbitration procedure. This is a simple and certain way to invite the limits on innovation that Karl warns about. Keeping ICANN's policy making process open, and holding them to simple principles -- such as minimize monopoly power -- will avoid such limits in the future. Karl Auerbach - posted on 2000-09-13 18:49:27 What the net becomes depends to a large extent on the limitations that are placed on the creativity of the individuals who conceive new applications and new methods of doing things. Can you imagine what the Internet of today would be like if in 1994 Tim Berners-Lee had been compelled to drop his idea for the World Wide Web because it might be considered as contributing to copyright infringement? The ICANN of today presents a significant risk to the creativity and innovation that will lead to the Internet of tomorrow. For instance - ICANN's elevation of trademark rights to be superior to virtually any other right in a name creates a strong pressure against anyone who thinks that there ought to be ways better then domain names as a means of finding things on the Internet. But there is a greater risk: There are people in the US Department of Commerce and elsewhere who are going around extolling ICANN as the model for all future forms of private Internet government. It would be sad indeed for ICANN's present minimalist approach to democracy to be replicated over other aspects of modern technology. Just recently on the IETF list a notion was floated that there ought to be a worldwide bureau that rates the quality of web sites. Would you like a future ICANN-clone to be rating and ranking what you say and do on the web? It is rare in history for there to be revolutions that change things overnight. Instead change usually occurs more gradually. For that reason it is important to repair ICANN's flaws now before they become deeply institutionalized and replicated. --karl--