[WSIS CS-Plenary] Nomination of Karl Auerbach

[Milton Mueller]

I would like to submit the name of Karl Auerbach as a 
CS nominee for the WGIG. email: karl at cavebear.com 

Mr. Auerbach has been working on Internet technology 
since the early 1970's, and has been a long-time participant 
in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). He has 
worked for Cisco in the past, and has developed his own 
company dealing with network management issues. In 
addition to his technical work, Mr. Auerbach has been an 
attorney in California since 1978.  

I consider Auerbach to be an ideal representative of CS 
on the Internet Governance Working Group, because of 
his campaign to make ICANN democratic and accountable. 
He is also committed to privacy rights, free expression, a 
decentralized Internet, and resistance to Internet's dominance 
by intellectual property interests. While ICANN was being 
created, Karl worked hard to ensure that it would be a 
membership organization that was open to civil society. He 
played an important role in ensuring that half of its Board 
would be selected through a global electorate. For two years 
ICANN's management attempted to eliminate, stall, or cripple 
those elections. When elections were finally held, Karl obtained 
a position on the ballot by petition, and decisively won the North 
American seat on the Board. 

The ICANN elections constituted a radical experiment in civil 
society participation in global governance. I believe that 
someone who was actually *elected* to a responsible position 
by thousands of civil society members has a special standing in 
the Internet Governance working group. It is rare that this 
exposure to the highly political side of Internet governance should 
be combined with the kind of technical knowledge that he has. 
He is also a very accessible, informal and friendly person. 

If you want to examine his service on the ICANN board, you can 
turn to his web page about it. 
http://www.cavebear.com/icann-board/index.htm 
Here is more biographical information
http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/karl.html 

It is well known that Karl was very critical of ICANN, but he is also 
very independent and is aware that some alternatives proposed are 
worse. One of his important achievements was to bring successful 
litigation requiring ICANN to open some of its records to the public. 

There are only two negative things that might be said about 
Mr. Auerbach as a nominee. One is that he has not been an 
active member of the WSIS activities. However, I hope this group
is not so parochial as to think that all of civil society is
encompassed
by WSIS activists. One must remember that until November 2003,
Internet governance and WSIS hardly intersected at all. By forming
a WG focused on Internet Governance, the December Plan of Action
required a consolidation and intersection of those elements of CS 
involved in ICANN with those CS elements involved in WSIS. Since 
December 2003, Mr. Auerbach has been recognized as an important 
participant in WGIG matters, being invited to the ITU's meeting in 
February and the UN ICT TF Global Forum in March. 

The other possible criticism is that Karl is focused exclusively on 
ICANN and does not see the bigger picture. To that I would answer,
yes, of course, he knows the most about those aspects of Internet
governance related to his direct experience in ICANN, but his 
training as an attorney and a technologist provides a much broader
awareness of key issues. This includes issues such as intellectual 
property, free/open source software issues, and telecommunications
policy and regulation. 

I hope you will support his nomination to the WGIG.

--Milton Mueller