ICANN Adds Democracy To Internet Governance

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October 11, 2000 (4:51 PM EDT)

By Mary Mosquera,

Cybercitizens around the world selected five new board members to the organization that administers the Internet, concluding one of the largest global all-online elections, ICANN said Wednesday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, added the at-large board members to inject a breath of democracy to Internet governance and better represent the major geographic regions of the world.

ICANN is the organization to which the U.S. government transferred technical administration of the Internet two years ago. ICANN oversees Internet domain names, IP address numbers, and operation of the Internet's root server system.

The new members are:

• Karl Auerbach, North America, a member of the Internet Engineering Task Force and a network architect at Cisco Systems Inc. (stock: CSCO);

• Ivan Moura Campos, Latin America, from Brazil and CEO of Akwan Information Technologies;

• Masanobu Katoh, Asia/Australia/Pacific, a Japanese citizen who works for Fujitsu in the United States;

• Andy Mueller-Maguhn, Europe, member of the Chaos Computer Club, a German computer activist group;

• And Nii Quaynor, Africa, from Ghana and on staff at Network Computer Systems.

"For ICANN, the at-large membership program has been a tremendous challenge, and a remarkable accomplishment," said ICANN President Mike Roberts. "With the help of tens of thousands of interested Internet users around the world, ICANN achieved its goal of a large, globally diverse membership -- and we have learned a lot along the way."

"These first ICANN elections are truly historic, and will provide valuable lessons as to how ICANN and other global organizations can operate in a transparent and accountable way in the future," said Scott Harshbarger, president of consumer group Common Cause.

The global election had its bumps.

ICANN and election.com, the company it contracted to manage the election, were plagued by technical difficulties that denied some Internet users the ability to register or to vote, said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group in Washington, D.C.

"The online community has taken the first steps toward broader public participation in managing the Internet itself," he said.

However, less than half of the registered voters around the world actually cast their ballots, election.com said.

Europe had the highest overall voter turnout at 48 percent; Asia/Australia/Pacific with 46 percent; Africa 40.5 percent; and Latin America and the Caribbean ranked fourth with 39 percent; and North American participation was lowest at 32 percent.

The new board members will assume their seats Nov. 16 at ICANN's annual meeting in Marina del Rey, Calif., filling out the 19-member Board of Directors.

The ICANN board is also expected to select new top-level domain names at the meeting to supplement the familiar .com, .org, and .net addresses.

"Work on making ICANN accessible, transparent, and more broadly representative of users' interests does not stop with this election," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We will be studying the election process carefully," he said.

In a global election with paper ballots, it could have taken more than two weeks just to tally the results, not to mention additional weeks to mail out ballots to registered voters around the world, said Mark Prieto, chief information officer at election.com.