ICANN candidature information page

Liz Bartlett, Member-nominated Candidate for the ICANN Board

Why vote for Liz? Because:

she has a strong interest in the continued smooth functioning of the domain name system,
she has experience in how the Internet has grown and developed over the last 10 years,
she is a proponent of keeping the structures that have worked successfully in the past (such as the TLD indicating something about the owner),
she understands the technical issues involved,
she personally owns several domain names,
she advises others on the choice and registration of names,
she is familiar with non-profit organizations,
she is non-partisan,
she brings no pre-conceptions or personal grudges to the ICANN board

Following is an expanded version of the information that appears on the ICANN web site about Liz. Information in [...]s is additional to the ICANN-posted information.

PROFESSIONAL

Employer(s)

Owner and Chief Operations Officer, Idyll Mountain Internet

[Liz started her career in 1983 as an analysis engineer for the Rover Group in England, working in the field of stress, noise, vibration and thermal simulations. She has used IBM mainframes, DEC PDPs and VAXes, all types of IBM PCs and clones and Sun Sparcstations in her professional life. She is familiar with DOS, Windows and UNIX operating systems and has both user and system administration experience under her belt. Her first computer languages are FORTRAN and BASIC, and she is currently increasingly involved in using PHP for web applications. She has been administering DNS services since 1995 as part of her duties at Idyll Mountain Internet. Her main work is as a web developer for small and medium-sized web sites, which has led her to experience with design, HTML, CSS, XHTML, Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL, SSI, SSL, Perl and CGI. She is also involved with teaching Web Management and Web Accessibiility courses through the HTML Writers Guild.]

QUALIFICATIONS

Statement addressing the candidates qualifications and experience specifically relevant to
(a) ICANN's technical and administrative responsibilities, and
(b) your leadership and policy-level roles.

Liz has over ten years of Internet experience, both as a user and system administrator. She currently provides primary DNS services to over 250 domains and secondary DNS to over 350 others. She has been a member of the Namedroppers mailing list, participated in several other online forums covering the topic of IP addressing and domain names and has a working knowledge of BIND.

Liz provides DNS service to the HTML Writers Guild, which represents over 100,000 webmasters worldwide. She has a good knowledge of the workings of non-profit organizations.

Liz is also active in other organizations such as local Chambers of Commerce, and has experience as a Committee Chair and event organizer.

[Liz has a BSc. in Engineering with French from Bath University, and an MSc. in Engineering from Warwick University. She is active in her local chapter of the American Business Women's Association and has been quoted in their national magazine, giving advice on guarding against email viruses and avoiding insecure internet transactions. She is a sought-after speaker with local organizations and has spoken on many Internet topics.]

ICANN RELATED INTERESTS

ICANN-related interests, including:
   (a) Employment and consulting relationships
   (b) Ownership or investment interests in any ICANN-related businesses
   (c) Official positions in any ICANN-related businesses or organizations

Liz has no material ICANN-related interests.

[Liz has noticed that many of the candidates who have already been involved with ICANN operations and forums have developed vast, entrenched viewpoints stemming from disgruntlement, disillusionment and personal mud-slinging. She believes that the only way out of such a situation is sweeping changes in the people involved so that discussion can once more focus on the issues, and not the personalities.]

BACKGROUND

Background information, personal statement, URL, or other information you would like posted in connection with your name on the ICANN website.

As a person whose daily work includes educating and advising others on the choice of, and use of domain names, Liz is keenly interested in the development of the Domain Name system. She is a firm believer in the core principles that the Internet was founded upon, and favors self-regulation over government regulation. While recognizing the need for change, she is of the opinion that established protocols and principals need to be preserved where possible, so that backwards compatibility is always maintained.

Liz is also someone who believes that change in the Domain Name system is overdue. There have been rumors of new TLDs for so long that the public has become confused as to what exists, what has been agreed upon, and what has yet to be decided. This issue needs to be resolved and implemented as quickly as possible (while ensuring a stable addressing system) and ICANN needs to move on to other issues.

[Liz is married to Kynn Bartlett, an active member of W3C's WAI working groups, and a past president of the HTML Writers Guild. They live in Southern California, and have three Tibetan Mastiffs.]

[Liz maintains a personal homepage which contains more information about her background and interests.]

OFFICIAL STATUS

Status as an official of a national government or a multinational entity established by treaty or other agreement between national governments, such as an elected official or employee of a government or multinational entity.

Not Applicable.

Response to The Civil Society's View

I strongly believe that ICANN must represent all. I feel I can represent many interests, being female and having lived in England, France and (currently) the U.S.A. I am heavily involved in web accessibility issues, making sure that web content is available to everyone regardless of physical disability, method of accessing the Internet, or level of technology.
I have had indirect experience of organizations whose leadership have resisted such transparency, and I know that this mentality is a fast road to destruction. I have always held the view that information must be shared with all interested parties, unless there are very good reasons to withhold it.
One of the strongest bases for an organization such as ICANN is the strength of its core membership. I believe the board should be drawn from the membership, that the board should then exercise the proper oversight of the staff, and that the ICANN staff should not be employed from the ranks of board members in order to maintain a proper employee- pmloyer relationship.
I believe that only in the clearest cases of intentional misleading or profit motivation should the "first come, first served" domain name policy be overturned.
I do not have strong views on the organizational split of IP address and DNS root server management. I feel this issues are best solved on a "what is technically best" basis.
I do not believe governmental control over domain name space can be a practical solution, given the global nature of the internet, the increasing abuse of the two-letter country codes, and the absence of a global government.
I am strongly against artifical scarcity of names. However, I am ambivalent on the decentralizing of some functions, as I realize that the independent operation of many registration/name lookup/routing functions can cause technical chaos. However I feel, (maybe naively) that it must be possible to retain a single, core central registry without giving any individual, organization or company the temptation of "abuse of power". I see no great problem with the current system.
Privacy policies as generally adopted by organizations that hold elections should apply to all ICANN operations.
The costs of participating in ICANN activities, and the costs that ICANN itself incurs in its operations should be kept as economically low as possible. Expenses should be looked at with a view to "does this further the ICANN objective" before approval.

Response to T. Byfield's questions for the Roving Reporter

ICANN presents itself as a "technical coordination body for the Internet." Do ICANN's activities to date support this description?
They support this description to a certain degree, but have strayed outside of the technical area into the political arena. However, I see this as inevitable for a body which has no direct political equivalent giving it direction for its technical activities.
ICANN describes itself as "transparent," "bottom-up," and "consensus-based." Do ICANN's activities to date support these descriptions?
No, but only because there is so little awareness of the organization and its activities so far. With greater public relations efforts, it will become such a body.
The "stability" of the internet is a staple if ICANN's rhetoric, as if to suggest that the net is a fragile entity that needs to be protected. What do you think ICANN is protecting it from?
The internet functions only because of the common protocols that the constituent computers use to communicate. This worked well, when the Internet was small, and consisted of entities with no commercial competition element. Now, with the combined elements of competition and technical ignorance, there is a possibility that the internet could fragment into different sections, each using different protocols and naming systems. ICANN is trying to protect it from such splits. Whether or not it really is that fragile, and such events could occur is another question.
"Global" top-level domains pose a basic quandary, which can be summarized thus: everyone in the world can point somewhere and say "there," but there can only be one there.com, one there.net, and one there.org. Many people have legitimate claims to what, within the limited context of DNS, appear to be the same words. Rather than expanding the namespace in order to produce a diversity more adequate to the rapidly expanding demand for new domains, ICANN has devoted much of its resources during its first two years to developing a global policy for arbitrating conflicts. In the balance, was this the best approach?
They were handed a situation that was already out of control, with the disappearance of the boundaries which originally dictated which entities should use which TLDs. Ideally, a rollback to enforce those original boundaries would have been best, but not practical. Both the arbitration policy and namespace expansion are necessary, and should be developed in parallel.
Should the refusal of the country-code domain registrars to pay the invoices ICANN submitted to them be seen as a referendum on ICANN's legitimacy as a "global" organization?
Possibly - but with no global government, it is almost impossible to create a global organization from scratch, that will be seen as having legitimacy everywhere. ICANN needs to concentrate on building this trust and image before attempting any enforcement actions.
ICANN's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) stipulates that "the complainant shall select the [dispute resolution] Provider from among those approved by ICANN by submitting the complaint to that Provider." Is this an appropriate way to assign resolution providers to cases?
There is no guaranteed "fair" way to do this. If ICANN had the trust of the global community, there would be no question of its appropriateness. The only alternative, to allow complainants to select any resolution provider they choose, is to open the door to even greater abuse - resolution providers must be approved by some body in order to ensure their impartiality, and it is churlish to expect otherwise.
ICANN often mentions its limited resources as a decisive factor in justifying various actions--in other words, there seems to be a serious disjuncture between ICANN's means and its goals. Has this cast doubt on the results of ICANN's activities to date?
Only in as much as the limited resources have prevented ICANN from being seen as a serious, trustworthy organization with the best interests of all parties at heart. If ICANN was able to build, and prove that they were such an organization, there would be far less doubt on their decisions so far.
The law firm Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue has played a huge role in ICANN, mainly through Joe Sims, ICANN's Chief Counsel, and Louis Touton, ICANN's Vice-President, Secretary, and General Counsel. Sims, with JDRP since 1978, was intimately involved in crafting ICANN's bylaws and selecting the initial boardmembers; he remains a cental figure at board meetings. Before joing ICANN, Touton spent the last 18 months of his 18-year practice at JDRP as a legal advisor involved in ICANN's formation, registrar-accreditation and dispute-resolution policies, and the NSI/DoC/ICANN agreements. Is it appropriate for an organization such as ICANN to be so closely aligned to a single law firm?
It is a matter which should be subjected to scrutiny, although it should not be assumed that the potential for "abuse of power" has automatically led to any such abuse. As ICANN grows in size, resources and legitimacy, legal issues should be a matter for a number of different lawyers/law firms, from different areas of the world.
ICANN may soon be a kingmaker, with the power to delegate the administration of new top-level domains. This will almost certainly be a multibillion-dollar business. Is an adequate system of checks and balances in place to ensure that ICANN's officers and staff do not abuse or exploit this power?
ICANN is registered as a non-profit organization with the State of California. If auditing and other reporting procedures are followed in accordance with the rules, regulations and guidelines for such organizations, these should form an adequate system of checks and balances.
However, as I am not currently intimately acquainted with the internals workings of the board, I cannot say with any great certainty that an adequate system exists now. That would be one of the first items I would look as as a board member, however; I know that it is all too easy for these things to be ignored during the initial years of an organization that starts small and grows rapidly.
Based on ICANN's actions to date, should participants in the Membership At Large, specifically, and netizens, generally, trust ICANN to honestly report the election's outcome?
Yes, I believe the election results will be honestly reported. It would be all too easy for incoming and future board members to discover any improprieties after they were elected, and although some may be tempted to keep quiet, I do not believe all would. The risk of "whistle-blowing" should be enough to keep things above board and honest.