ICANN Prepares For Election

ICANN, the independent self-regulatory body charged with maintaining the domain name system, is holding its first ever At Large elections October 1-10. Registered At Large members will be electing five representatives, one from each geographical region, to the ICANN Board of Directors. ICANN faces several controversial issues in the next year, including the implementation of new generic top-level domains like .web and .biz.

For North America, the candidates are: Karl Auerbach, Lyman Chapin, Donald Langenberg, Lawrence Lessig, Harris Miller, Barbara Simons, and Emerson Tiller. Candidates were nominated by the At Large members and an ICANN Nominating Committee between May and late August. Information on all of the nominees can be found at http://members.icann.org/nominees.html.

To help At Large members make their decision, ICANN is hosting an ongoing Q&A forum on the At Large web site where members can post questions for the candidates and view their responses. In addition, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Internet Democracy Project are sponsoring "A Day with the North-American ICANN Candidates" on October 2 in Cambridge, Mass. The event will consist of an informal dialogue with remote participation over the web, and then a formal debate in the style of the Presidential Commission debates. More information on the debate can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/candidateforum/.