Question: How do you intend to make sure ICANN not strictly geared to meeting business interests? Doesn't entrance fee for TLD operation de facto exclude not-for-profit groups?

Nominee Replies

Alf Hansen - posted on 2000-10-08 14:24:10 Good question again. The composition of the Board will reflect the distribution of power. The plan is to have 9 At Large Directors out of 19. I think this will ensure that the interests of all sides (both businesses and customers) will be properly handled concerning names, addresses and protocols. The entrance fee for new TLDs does not exclude not-for-profit groups. Not-for profit groups can form new alliances with entities in the Registry-business and come up with very good ideas and models for new not-for-profit-TLDs. Jeanette Hofmann - posted on 2000-10-08 12:40:17 This is certainly the most difficult problem the At Large directors will have to cope with. The majority of board members represents directly or indirectly commercial interests. The commercial stakeholders, particularly the Intellectual Property & trademark lobby, are by far better organized than individual users. As things stands, we might get at most two directors on the board who can be expected to form a noticeable opposition to ICANN's current policy. It's hard to predict though what two people are able to achieve. Among other things, this will depend on the support they'll get from the At Large community. The very minimum we should expect is that the decision-making process becomes more transparent and open to the participation by individual members. How much this will show in future decisions I can't predict. The $ 50.000 application fee is one of the decisions that could have been scandalized by a vocal minority of directors. I am less sure though if it could have been prevented.