The interim board in charge of the new body overseeing the internet’s domain name and numbering systems are due to stand up in front of the internet community for the first time at a public meeting in Boston, Massachusetts tomorrow, Saturday. Among the questions the ten are likely to be asked is how they were appointed. That has never been properly resolved – their appointments were simply announced. It is probably the major stumbling block to acceptance of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names, or ICANN as it is known, by the internet community. Board chairman Esther Dyson revealed to the community via a mailing list recently how she was asked to serve on the board. She said she was approached informally at a meeting in Aspen, Colorado in August by Ira Magaziner and IBM’s Roger Cochetti, who is involved with the Global Internet Project fund-raising effort to fund ICANN’s early stages. Nothing was agreed for definite, but Dyson later got an email from Joe Sims, the lawyer working for Jon Postel and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), from which ICANN evolved. Dyson accepted and that was that. The current board will only be around for a year at most and during that time it is supposed to implement a membership strategy for ICANN, whereby the members, be they individual, companies or non-profit organizations will elect all future boards and presidents. Other issues on the informal agenda at Saturday’s meeting are the structure of the three supporting organizations that will develop policy for the board and how to keep (or make) the whole process transparent and manage conflicts of interest. Meeting details at http://www.iana.org/index2.html.
