No organization with ICANN’s level of responsibility operates with the independence that ICANN enjoys, even under the current nominal oversight of the Department of Commerce. ICANN should be governed by its direct users-the registries and registrars-in order to build accountability into its structure. ICANN should hew closely to the technical functions involved in administering the Domain Name System. ICANN should have a clear mission of encouraging competition, which means allowing relatively free entry into the market for generic top-level domains and a minimal role as a regulator. For freer entry to work well, protections for incumbent domain name holders must be strengthened, so they are not subject to “nuisance” or “ransom” demands from new registries.
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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]
