NZer elected to ICANN Board
December 23rd, 2004 at 12:43 am by David FarrarCongratulations to Peter Dengate-Thrush, the immediate past president of InternetNZ, who has effectively just been elected as one of the 15 Directors of the Board of ICANN.
A ballot has just been concluded amongst country code managers (who have joined the country code supporting organisation of ICANN) for two members of the ICANN Board. The result needs to be ratified by the country code organisation council, but this is a formality.
ICANN sort of sets policy on which top level domains (.com, .info, .net etc) get created, who gets to run them, the operation of the root servers which the Internet basically runs on etc, so it has quite a significant role in Internet governance.
UPDATE: Press release from InternetNZ is now below.
InternetNZ (The Internet Society of New Zealand) is delighted that
December 23rd, 2004 at 9:30 am
Mmm. I think back to the buffoonery episode. PDT’s reign was marked by belief in the power of regulation and the wisdom of management that proved very expensive to various people in various ways. To this day I am convinced that POB was egged on to sue by people who wanted to see case law established for internet libel.
I wish Peter the best of luck. Just remember that governance exists to further operations, not the other way round.
Vote:December 23rd, 2004 at 10:37 am
On the O’Brien vs Brown “buffoon” libel case, I disagreed (quite strongly) with then then ISOCNZ backing the lawsuit. It in fact was one of the catalysts which led to significant change.
But putting that aside, the views PDT has expressed, and the changes he has managed to get within ICANN, have both been beneficial and significant. I doubt there would be a ccNSO within ICANN without him.
Very much agree that governance is there to further operations. The pre-reform ICANN was awful in that it tried to force operators to do many undesirable things. I have more optimism for the “new” ICANN. Time will tell if that is misplaced.
Vote: