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Follow UsEric Auchard
LOS ANGELES: Capping a stormy two years as head of the Internet's main
governing body, chairwoman Esther Dyson said on Wednesday she was in favor of a
significant expansion of names as the best way for the organization to foster
competition in cyberspace.
In an interview, Dyson sought to answer a patchwork of criticism of the
Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plan to add dozens of
names ranging from ".biz" to ".union" to existing categories
like ".com."
"Personally, I am one of those 'give it a whirl people,'" Dyson
told Reuters, dismissing calls to limit the number of new Internet suffixes, or
delay the plan for further study. She declined to specify which of the 44
proposals she might back.
Detractors vary from defenders of the status quo who see expansion as
diluting the value of existing ".com" and country-code-suffixes like
".uk," to those worried it would unleash a new wave of cyber-squatting
on famous names.
ICANN organizers have faced active criticism among many overseas
participants, who complain about the "American-centric" agenda of the
group.
Name expansion less important to non-US groups
Some of the most active critics at the conference have been administrators who
complain of feeling disenfranchised in setting direction for what is at heart a
global network.
"We don't recognize any authority of ICANN," said Peter Dengate-Thrush,
a trial lawyer, co-chair of the global country administrators' advisory group to
ICANN and head of the Internet Society of New Zealand.
"We have our authority from the Internet communities in our native
land," Dengate-Thrush said. "If I breach the trust of the New Zealand
Internet community, they could put me in jail."
Dengate-Thrush and other country administrators consider the domain name
expansion an "American obsession" that will disadvantage slower-moving
nations. They have called on ICANN to reject assigning new geographic name
categories such as ".africa" or ".dubai."
Countering complaints that ICANN has not done enough to foster global
participation, she said the sheer diversity of the Internet community made the
task difficult.
She echoed complaints by ICANN president Mike Rhodes that some country
administrators are pressuring ICANN to lock down lucrative country naming rights
granted before many governments discovered the Web.
Some, such as the fast-growing Internet domains in Germany and Britain are
responsive to market forces, while others are in the hands of isolated academic
technicians, or in some cases, held by close family members of government
officials.
"The underlying issue, let's face it, is that not all governments are
ideal," Dyson said, citing the example of an unnamed country where Internet
control is said to be vested in the hands of the cousin of a government
official.
Competition, not "digital divide," is ICANN focus: Dyson
Dyson is heading up the debate over the proposed names expansion this week at
ICANN's annual meeting here, which will be voted on by the international
non-profit group's divided 19-member board Thursday.
"We're not a consumer protection organization. We're not here to monitor
the behavior of people," she said in rejecting the notion that ICANN should
closely guard the Internet address system.
Following the vote, Dyson plans to retire and return to life as a private
investor, industry pundit and newsletter publisher. She and four other appointed
ICANN directors will be replaced by newly elected board members from five
"at-large" regions of the globe.
These new directors were elected via an experimental Web-based poll last
month designed to open up grass-roots representation. A new chairman will be
chosen once the at-large directors are seated late Thursday.
ICANN's board is now made up of a variety of interest group representatives
drawn from technical experts, industry groups, country administrators and
non-profits.
She said some ICANN critics misunderstood the fragile, underfunded nature of
the group, which was designated in 1998 by the US government to break up the
monopoly of administrator Network Solutions, now a unit of VeriSign Inc.
"This is the administration of a technical infrastructure that is used
to serve a variety of interests, which also happens to have lots of political,
social and economic consequences. "We're not pretending to be a global
democracy.
"We're not pretending to manage the digital divide here. Some want to
defend public interests, some want to keep it simple and some want it to be used
for their own interest," she said of ICANN's attempt to accommodate
competing views.
(C) Reuters Limited 2000.