| In the virtual world of the internet, ICANN might be said to be the equivalent of the United Nations. The United States-based internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the body that manages internet address naming. It was set up in 1998 and, for most of that time, it has been chaired by American Vint Cerf, widely considered the "father" of the internet. At a meeting in Los Angeles late this month, Cerf will be stepping down, leaving the chairmanship open to one of ICANN's 20 or so other directors. One of those is Peter Dengate Thrush, a Kiwi who has been associated with ICANN from its inception and who continues to have deep involvement with New Zealand internet governance. Last year, while at an ICANN meeting in Morocco, Dengate Thrush was confronted with the personal tragedy of the deaths of his wife, brother and father in a car crash in the Hutt Valley. Despite that calamity, he continues his work. Last night, in advance of the Los Angeles meeting, Dengate Thrush and the rest of the ICANN board were to get together in Frankfurt to discuss Cerf's replacement. "We've been working on succession planning for some time," Wellington-based Dengate Thrush, a lawyer, said before setting out for Germany, "and we're going to see if we can finalise things at that [Frankfurt] meeting." While the Frankfurt meeting was restricted to ICANN's directors, anyone is welcome at the Los Angeles event, which runs from October 29 to November 2. Cerf, in fact, has gone as far as making a direct appeal for people to come along in a posting to YouTube (owned by Google, where he is chief internet evangelist). "Your opinions could count," Cerf tells viewers, in a pitch for public participation in running the internet. In fact, before the public part of the Los Angeles gathering gets going, various bodies associated with ICANN will have been meeting for two days to talk about technical internet governance matters. Those sessions will include discussion of changes to the WHOIS database (by the Generic Names Supporting Organisation), new generic top-level domains, or gTLDs (by the Governmental Advisory Committee), and IPv6 (by the internet Assigned Numbers Authority). When the issues are stripped of the jargon, they're not as inaccessible as they first sound. Take WHOIS. It's a little-known online service that provides contact information for the registrant of any domain name. For websites ending in .nz, go to www.dns.org.nz, enter the domain name in the search engine and all will be revealed. Similarly, gTLDs are a burning issue for any group wanting to establish a new category of web address. The already approved ones include .com, .school, .govt and the lesser-known .aero. But what's to stop the porn industry creating .xxx for websites with adult content? It is already trying but ICANN, and its supporting organisations, have so far said no. 责任编辑：米尊 |