New ICANN CEO Promises More Transparency And Balance
Published on 12 October 2012

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/10/12/new-icann-ceo-promises-more- 
transparency-and-balance/? 
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The new CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and  
Numbers (ICANN), Fadi Chehadé, today announced a new structure to  
enhance transparency, visibility and balance of the private net  
managing body to be presented on 15 October, the opening day of the  
Toronto meeting.

Chehadé, who took over 40 days ago, spoke at a 12 October pre- 
conference of the ICANN Non-Commercial User Constituency (NCUC) and  
did not hold back criticism of ICANN. A “disfunctional relationship”  
between ICANN board and staff, a “culture of fear” at the staff level  
(a fear of making mistakes and being hold responsible) and most  
importantly, several layers of imbalances, are things he has already  
started to tackle, he said. Not only there is an imbalance between  
English-language and non-English-language speakers, which is the  
result of where ICANN came from, but also there is still some work  
ahead to create a multi-equal-stakeholder playing field.

“It is not one government above the others, or governments above us  
or one group above the other groups,” Chehadé said emphatically. The  
first people he would meet when going to a new city, he said, would  
be “not the people in the fancy suits” but the at-large internet  
community.

A shifting, and more important role of the broader internet community  
and users at large was also the topic of the NCUC pre-conference on  
“ICANN & Internet Governance: Security and Freedom in a Connected  
World.” Ron Deibert from Citizen Lab challenged the community to take  
up their role in protecting the internet, in a decentralised,  
classical internet way, against rising security threats – and not  
leave that task to the states that in fact are trying to roll back  
civil rights.

The NCUC Toronto conference, sponsored by the Brazilian Internet  
Steering Committee, also talked about the “hot potato” new Registrar  
Accreditation Agreement in which law enforcement from some countries  
want to have Whois data retention provisions, objections and  
potential censorship of new top-level domain (TLD) applications by  
governments and the debate about the World Conference on  
International Telecommuncation (WCIT), all of which will be discussed  
during the 14-18 October ICANN 45 meeting.





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