The Internet will change more in the next five years than it has done in the past three decades, the president and chief executive officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has said.
Speaking at a forum event in Mexico City, Rod Beckstrom spelled out a democratic vision for the world wide web.
He told delegates at the event, sponsored by Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transportation and the University Iberoamericana, that the Internet has flourished without any central promotion or regulation.
“It has been precisely through its open and free nature that it has become the fundamental platform to build the Information Society,” Mr. Beckstrom said.
“We believe in a simple principle: everyone with an interest in the Internet has an equal right to be heard in its governance. All stakeholders should have a voice. No one is more important than the other.”
The web will fundamentally depend on a multi-stakeholder governance model that ICANN embodies.
“We must continue to work together under principles of inclusion, consensus, multi-stakeholder participation, bottom-up decision making processes, transparency and accountability,” Mr. Beckstrom said.
Last week, the deadline for registering with ICANN to enter generic top level domain name application process closed.