Question: What are your beliefs to ensure ICANN meets obligations to the rights and entitlements of citizens, within political and corporate governance jurisdiction, to privacy, universality of access and entitlement to organise resistance to dominant commercialisation of technogovernance.

Nominee Replies

Masanobu Katoh - posted on 2000-10-09 06:23:58 To ensure the rights and entitlements of general citizens and to remove commercialization of Internet are important goals for ICANN. These issues have been the central consideration of all the discussions in past ICANN meetings. In order to make ICANN as the model for the 21st century (as I speak in many places), ICANN should make itself available to all members of the society in the world. One of the key elements is to ensure the diversity of participation. ICANN is trying this, but the real question is if At Large general members feel that they have enough participation. As one of my election promises, I will work toward the involvement of non-English speakers in ICANN activities and the establishment of local ICANN supporting organizations. Thus I would like to improve matters and address these concerns. Sureswaran Ramadass - posted on 2000-10-09 02:44:40 I believe that one of ICANNs main reasons for existance is to carry out the beliefs mentioned above. ICANN should definitely strive to continue to uphold this belief. Lulin Gao - posted on 2000-10-08 21:06:37 In my opinion,firstly all obligations you have mentioned should be included in the Charter and Bylaws of the ICANN, secondly the ICANN should have a competent Board compraised of representatives of various regions and countries and thirdly the ICANN should implement the principles of democracy, transparency, consensus and grass-root policy,in order to attract wide Internet community all over the world to participate in process of its decision making and supervising. Johannes Chiang - posted on 2000-10-08 11:20:48 I believe we are walking into the Internet world and evolutionary living in the society (community) over Internet but not the Internet over society (like IP over everything). I think it is going to be a natural evolution process to reach this and we must obey the natural rules. Therefore, I describe my vision in my web pages: ¡§If elected, I will do my best to reflect and fulfill the requirements of AAP Internet citizens in joint decision making within the ICANN Board, but will not pursue a narrow-minded governance of the Internet affairs.¡¨ Based on this, I think the main objective of ICANN is to contribute in helping people as well as ourselves to live in the society over Internet. There is during this election the discussion, whether ICANN should restrict itself to technical decision making. I think in this discussion we are using the wrong rhetoric or we are narrow-minded, since technical decisions have of course economic, political and social policy outcomes. If it is in this way, we are also taking the risk of losing transparency, participation, and process that normally attach to policy decision-making by calling for technical decision-making. We always need integrated solutions with interdisciplinary consideration but not just developing technology for technology, making business for business and making law for law etc. That is why I have been trying to conduct Internet researches into scientific, economic and cultural perspectives, and to work in its practices with engineering, business, health-care and social considerations. (see My web pages) Of course, it should not only be done by a person like me but most importantly by the joint decision making of the director board being full of communication and mutual expertise. And, this also make me standing for the position to enhance the guiding values such as democracy, transparency, bottom-up process, equal rights, decentralization, privacy, minimal cost and equity as stated in the brief comments of the Yokohama Statement on Civil Society. Therefore, I think this election is very important for ICANN and at-large members have to show their awareness to vote and to select the most suitable one as their representative in the ICANN Director Board. At last, I believe taht self-organization and self-regulation in Internet world should be crucial concerns of ICANN but not the governance by/for any organization. In these days, the discussion about aforementioned issues let me remember a poem in ¡¥80s: ¡§ The wall on which the prophets wrote is cracking in the sand, ¡K¡K the world is on the hand of those who know and do not know ¡K. Confusion will be the Epitaph. ¡K¡¨. (Adopted from ¡§Epitaph¡¨ of King Crimerson). I believe we are not going to be in this scene if we can learn from the past.