ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) joined with four other groups June 28 to launch a voter registration and education campaign to recruit “cyber citizens.” The effort urges Internet users to join the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international, nonprofit organization that oversees the numerical addressing schemes and domain names that route information through the Internet.
OITP—along with Common Cause, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), the Carter Center, and the Harvard University Berkmann Center—wants members to vote in the first online election for five new at-large board members, to ensure that individual Internet users are properly represented on the board, the New York Times reported June 29. Anyone age 16 or older with an Internet address is eligible to join the group.
Jerry Berman, executive director of CDT, said ICANN’s decisions affect everyone. “They are essentially affecting what is going to be a critical identity and property right of every person in the 21st century,” Berman said.
Posted July 3, 2000.