The e-votes were tallied late Tuesday in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN) first election at large.
Five new board members will join ICANN’s 19 others tasked with supervising
the Internet’s naming and addressing schemes. The organization’s
memberships of 76,000 Internet users were invited to participate in the
e-mail election.
Karl Auerbach, a tenured Cisco Systems network architect won the seat for
North America. A reformer, Auerbach ran a campaign that condemned current
management, accusing ICANN of collusion with special interest groups.
A German hacker and member of the Chaos Computer Club won the seat
representing Europe. Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a student at the University of
Berlin, currently works as a self-employed network security consultant.
Brazilian Ivan Moura Campos, Akwan Information Technologies chief executive
officer will represent Latin America and the Caribbean. Campos also serves
as chairman of Brazil’s Internet Steering Committee.
Japanese born Masanobu Katoh will represent Asia on the ICANN board, even
though the Fujitsu engineer currently resides in the suburbs of Washington,
D.C.
Nii Quaynor won the final seat representing Africa. The resident of Ghana
plans to organize an in-region grassroots institution to mobilize African
participation in Internet issues and develop the continents burgeoning Web
marketplace.
From its base of operations in Marina del Rey, CA, ICANN acts as a
non-profit corporation responsible for domain name allocation, network
management and other technical issues that impact the global online community.
The group operates under an exclusive U.S. government contract granting
ICANN eminent domain over the allocation of top-level domains commonly know
as TLDs.
One of the expanded board’s first tasks will be to determine the next
series of top-level domains that will shape the future of the Internet.
Domain name designations that may be added to the familiar .com, .net, and
.org sub-domains include. ads, .club, .fun, .mad, .sucks and .war, as well
as 75 other options.
ICANN’s chairperson Ester Dyson was appointed as one of the groups
nine initial directors in October 1998. Dyson’s leadership of ICANN
routinely comes under attack, particularly for being swayed by dot-com
corporations and special interest groups. The at-large election of regional
board members was implement to quiet collusion critics.
Dyson has staunchly defended ICANN’s ability to manage the Web on a
worldwide scale in testimony before U.S. and foreign governments.
