Accessing Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): Towards Civil Society Metrics to Evaluate the ICANN Experiment

Publication Date: July 2003

Publisher: Center for Democracy and Technology

Author(s): Center for Democracy and Technology

Research Area: Internet Governance

Keywords: Ombudsman; Intellectual property; Internet Governance

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization responsible for coordinating certain key Internet resources, has been the focus of much controversy. This paper examines benchmarks or goals for measuring ICANN's work, identifies recurring themes in how prominent stakeholders have described and evaluated ICANN, determines which themes are most useful to developing a common evaluation framework for ICANN, and offers ten "Civil Society Metrics" for use by the community in evaluating ICANN from a public interest perspective.