Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)

Governing the Commons:
The Future of Global Internet Administration
September 24-25, 1999, Alexandria, VA, U.S.A.

PROCEEDINGS

Statement by Rick Barry
Mid-Atlantic Director, CPSR, and Session Chair

Good Morning and welcome to the second day of the CPSR conference: “Governing the Commons: The Future of Global Internet Administration,”especially to those of you who are just joining us.  My name is Rick Barry.  I’m Principal of Barry Associates, aka rbarry.com.  I am an information management and technology consultant based in Arlington, VA, and am the Mid-Atlantic Director of CPSR.

For those of you not familiar with CPSR, we are a nonprofit public interest group that addresses the benefits and risks to society resulting from the use of technology.  Because of the ubiquitousness of the Internet and its potential role in society, the central theme and thrust of CPSR is “One Planet, One Net”.  We see the governance of the Internet as a linchpin within that framework.  As clearly the participants in this conference share that point of view, whatever views you may have on how Internet governance should be addressed, we welcome your participation here and hope that you will take this opportunity to take advantage of the very attractive conference registration fee, that for only a few dollars more includes CPRS membership.

We wish to say a particular thank you to the organizations and people who have supported this conference financially.  We are especially grateful to our two major sponsors – the Morino Institute here in Northern Virginia and the Open Society Institute – without whom the conference could not have taken place.  Please recognize the representatives of those groups here today and express your thanks as well.  (Could they stand?)  A full listing of supporters and the program is published on the CPSR website at http://www.cpsr.org/  Will the other representatives of supporting organizations who have silver stars on their name tags also stand and be recognized.  Please thank all of these people as you speak to one another during the breaks.

A few quick logistical notes:

• Smoking is not permitted in the conference areas.
• Rest rooms and telephones are to the right and at the end of the lobby.
• Please be courteous to the speakers and your neighbors, and turn off your telephones, beepers, and other noisemakers now.  This whole conference is being audio taped.  Copies of the tapes will be available through the Berkman Center for Internet & Society website and the CPSR website in a couple of days.  Accordingly I ask that following each of the sessions those of you wishing to ask a question or make a comment, queue behind the floor mikes so as not to lose time traveling from your seats.  Please be sure to clearly state your full name and affiliation before proceeding.
• Lunch will be in this room.  There will be a kiosk outside of the room.  We ask that you take a stretch at the beginning of the lunch period, get your lunch and bring it back to this room where we will hear Ralph Nader’s Keynote Address.

Turning to the first session this morning, we recognize that there is a relationship between current technology and organizational design, although these links are too infrequently made or not well made.  ICANN, and other related organizational structures, including NSI, were designed under the assumption that the authoritative organizational structure had to match a single root architecture at the technology level.

Our panelists will discuss alternatives to the underlying DNS technology and will challenge the relevance of the current organizational model in the light of other technical models.  What impact will technological alternatives have on organizational modalities for:

• determining and serving stakeholders;
• achieving equity in representation in geographical, sector and other ways;
• understanding and acting upon changing requirements;
• dispute resolution;
• adapting to change;
• achieving long-term sustainability.

Speaking to these issues will be Karl Auerbach, Peter Deutsch, Nico Popp and Scott Bradner.  I will not spell out in detail the credentials of these distinguished speakers.  Their bios are contained in the Program, and on the CPSR public website at http://www.cpsr.org/  Let me just very briefly introduce all of them together, and then allow them to make their presentations.

Karl Auerbach is affiliated with the Individual Domain Name Owners (IDNO) Constituency.  He is presently a Senior Research & Development Engineer at Cisco Systems.  He has experience in both the theoretical and practical sides of networking, and has been active in the IETF and in the development of Internet standards.

Peter Deutsch is the creator of the first Internet search engine -- Archie -- and helped bring the Internet to Canada in 1988.  He is currently President of ShopHound Inc., an Internet e-commerce startup company.  He is also a member of a technical review committee for the Canadian Mathematical Society.

Nico Popp is Chief Technical Officer for RealNames Corporation.  He is a member of CPSR.  He led the engineering team that designed and built the first version of the Internet Keywords system, and is responsible for its continued enhancement.  Nico was the director and co-inventor of WebObjects at NeXT/Apple.

Finally, Scott Bradner is Senior Technical Consultant, Harvard University, where he has been involved in the design, operation and use of data networks since ARPANET days.  He is co-director of the Transport Area in the IETF, a member of the IESG, founder of the Harvard Network Device Test Lab, weekly columnist for Network World, and consults in his spare time.

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