The future of ICANN was the subject of discussions on the east and west coasts of the U.S. last week. On the west coast, The San Francisco Chronicle sent four journalists along to interview Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO, on issues affecting ICANN. They asked questions on what the organisation has set out to achieve, the difficulties it faces and the immediate future. While on the east coast, ICANN was the subject of a discussion at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.Highlights of the Paul Twomey interview are available as an edited transcript on the Chronicle’s website, while the full 70 minutes of the interview is available in audio format. The edited transcript looks at IDNs and how they will be used in practice, the new gTLD process, the love/hate relationship, as described by the Chronicle, with VeriSign over the years, pressures to take away some of ICANN’s role and finishes with Twomey commenting on the effect of the global economic downturn. Here Twomey says, that while there was an expectation gTLD growth would plateau and ccTLDs would keep increasing. However in reality, there has been an ongoing growth on both.On the introduction of IDNs, Twomey describes the process is like going through “a 15-story building that had red brick columns, and changing all those red bricks to multicolored bricks, and doing it in a way that makes certain the door is still open and the windows still work.”ICANN was also the subject of a debate in Washington D.C. last week reports InternetNews. InternetNews suggests ICANN could be headed for a shakeup, referring to the JPA that expires in September. This was the subject of a discussion at the National Press Club last week.ICANN’s accountability was raised, with Thomas Lenard, president of the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) , a Washington think tank, who, along with New York University business professor Lawrence White, argued they would like to see ICANN continue to operate as a U.S. nonprofit, but move its oversight from the public sector to the private. They claim this would help with ICANN’s accountability. However others argued that such an approach could freeze out other stakeholders in the process, namely ISPs and domain holders.Paul Levins, also attending, said the idea that ICANN would allow itself to slip into patently anticompetitive behaviour without stronger oversight is “demonstrably not true.” Levins also took issue with critics who said ICANN operated under the thumb of the US government. Levins said, according to the article, that ICANN has moved ahead with the process of opening up gTLDs, a pro-competitive move that the TPI supports, over the objections of the Commerce Department. Levins also disputed ICANN’s lack of accountability, saying ICANN made great efforts to court broad international participation.The edited transcript and audio of the San Francisco Chronicle article are available from:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/10/BU0117E65J.DTL [edited transcript]
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/chroncast/detail?entry_id=39589 InternetNews’ report on the debate at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. is available from:
www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3819556