By Thomas Lenard and Lawrence White
Published in The Hill on October 13, 2014
A previously obscure nonprofit corporation that essentially governs the Internet – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – has featured prominently in recent news stories due to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s plan to relinquish its key oversight role. Details of this transition will be high on the agenda as ICANN stakeholders meet in Los Angeles this week. Many observers fear that ICANN could soon be subject to the heavy-handed influences of governments that do not share the values that have led to the innovation, flexibility and openness that has hitherto characterized the Internet.
The United States’ proposed withdrawal is the opportunity for a rethinking of ICANN’s governance structure. Moreover, we believe that there is a reasonable solution to ICANN’s longstanding accountability problem that would mitigate concerns of government influence.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/220528-a-better-way-to-govern-the-internet
The Technology Policy Institute
The Technology Policy Institute is a non-profit research and educational organization that focuses on the economics of innovation, technological change, and related regulation in the United States and around the world. More information is available at https://techpolicyinstitute.org/.
Thomas Lenard is Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Lenard is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on telecommunications, electricity, antitrust, privacy, e-commerce and other regulatory issues. His publications include Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated?; The Digital Economy Fact Book; Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information; Competition, Innovation and the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace; and Deregulating Electricity: The Federal Role.
Before joining the Technology Policy Institute, Lenard was acting president, senior vice president for research and senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He has served in senior economics positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Trade Commission and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.
Lenard is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He can be reached at [email protected]
