Letter from ICANN Chairman of the Board, Esther Dyson (6 November 1998)

Letter to the Internet Community
From Esther Dyson, Interim Chairman, ICANN

This letter accompanies the release of the new by-laws for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). As the Interim Chairman of the Board, and for the Board, I wish to extend the promise that we are here to serve you and to listen to you.

As you probably know, we have sent the by-laws posted here to the US Government, with the hope that they will meet the Government's conditions for negotiating the transition agreement transferring Domain Name administration from US Government control.

We are eager to receive US Government authority, but we are also looking forward to earning your support. We know we have a challenging task ahead of us in working with our many and various constituencies to design a robust and open governance structure. Beyond that, we need to use that structure to handle the many decisions ahead of us - decisions that inevitably will please some people and leave others disappointed. We must be accountable to all of you, even as we cannot follow all your wishes.

Specifically, and as called for in the by-laws and the accompanying transmittal letter, we plan to get to work right away on figuring out how to define a membership structure and acquire members who will guide the new Corporation over the long term. Some of those members will be part of defined constituencies as Supporting Organizations; others may be individuals or organisations. We hope you will join us in exploring how, through membership structures, policies and otherwise, ICANN's accountability to the Internet community can best be ensured.

We also know that accountability is not a matter of rules or policies or disclosure alone. It requires two-way give-and-take and a willingness to listen and learn. For many of us, this is a new world and we are eager to learn from all of you. One opportunity to help us do so will be at our first open meeting, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 14. We hope to see you there.

Esther