Question: ICANN champions the promotion of competition as a core value. What other values do you believe the ICANN board should promote?

Nominee Replies

Donald Langenberg - posted on 2000-09-24 12:48:29 This is probably best answered by stating that I find the Civil Society Statement of the Yokahama Forum compatible with my own values, and I would endorse it. Having said that, I am not yet persuaded of the validity of some of the specific issues and recommendations that have been attached to that statement. Re competition, I'm a firm believer in it. Harris Miller - posted on 2000-09-22 06:36:31 Transparency, openness and focus on its specific mandate of technical standards. If ICANN can execute on strengthening these selections, it will go a long way towards fullfilling the needs and expectations of the user community. Emerson Tiller, J.D., Ph.D. - posted on 2000-09-20 19:34:24 The free flow of ideas from a diverse set of constituents should be a core value. To achieve this, we need bottom up decision making, transparency, accountability, and the broad dissemination of information about what ICANN does to the Internet using public. Lawrence Lessig - posted on 2000-09-20 08:46:36 There is a deeper value built into competition. That value is that the direction of the net is determined by bottom-up participation. That is a principle built into the very design of the net; that is the value implicit in the structure and norms of the free software community; that is the history of innovation in this space. All the force of the universe is now concentrated to pushing the net to embrace the values of commerce. In my view, if the net, through bottom-up participation, does that, then fine. But ICANN should assure that other forces do not bend the evolution and development of the net, and subvert bottom-up control. Intellectual property, for example, should not become a power that controls development in net technology. The danger for cyberspace is capture; the easiest institution to capture is ICANN; the most important issue in this campaign is how to assure this institution does not become captured. Karl Auerbach - posted on 2000-09-19 21:24:25 Open, transparent, and accountable processes and decisions. So far they have failed miserably on all three points. As for competition - It's a worthy goal, but it is secondary to open, transparent, and accountable operation. In addition, I fail to see how ICANN's creation of a set of reseller channels for NSI's registry services really constitutes competition.