Confederation of European Computer User Associations

 

CECUA Euro - News

ICANN Case for reform - the death of the user

On February 24th, 2002 a report by Mr Stuart Lynn, ICANN CEO, titled ICANN - The Case for Reform was posted on the ICANN web.

This report extensively reported in the media has already caused a lot of controversy. In his report Mr Lynn reviews the history of ICANN, progress or rather lack of progress made and presents a proposal for radical restructuring of ICANN. For full report consult posted on the ICANN web site

Recently CECUA as the only Independent User Organisation has been consulting with ICANN on user involvement and user representation. CECUA firmly believes that ICANN needs the users to become more successful and for a better image. However, if Mr Lynn's proposal is approved there will be no user representation on the ICANN Board. And also the single most important Internet user issue there is will remain unresolved, i.e. internationalised characters.

Mr Stuart Lynn really wants to kill two birds with one stone.

First he wants to relieve ICANN of user representation and user involvement. Secondly he wants to kill off the single most important user issue there is: the support of internationalised characters.

CECUA is opposed to both. CECUA firmly believes that much of ICANN problems result from negligible influence and lack of involvement from users, citizens and consumers. Finishing the killing of that "bird" will not solve anything. It will only serve to further isolate ICANN from reality.

Regarding the internationalised characters Mr. Lynn makes two derogatory and highhanded references to international characters and categorises them as being:

"in furtherance of real or trumped up nationalistic concerns"

and

"anticompetitive exercises of market power"

This is just unbelievable. Is this arrogance or simply ignorance?

Looking at the 400 million Citizens of the European Union alone only one in seven citizens has English as a mother tongue. And six out of seven citizens face mutilation of their Christian names and Family names going on the Internet. Getting rid of Internet name mutilation is the single most important user issue there is. There is no way around it. The Internet has to support the lingual and cultural diversity of Europe. The Internet is a global phenomenon and it has to act responsibly. The Internet is for the people, not the other way around, i.e. the people for the Internet.

At the same time the report calls for more government involvement. Those same governments that are very concerned about the maintenance of the European heritage including national languages and cultures of the people who elected them to serve in the first place. Belittling of international/national characters and at the same time asking for more support from those same governments looks like ICANN has just about sawn off the branch it would like to sit on.

Friedrich Dittmer
CECUA Deputy Director
Media and Public Relations
friedrich.dittmer@cecua.org