After months of heated debate, the US Government appears to be on the verge of backing a new body for administering the names and numbers that make up Internet addresses.

Esther Dyson talks to Chris Nuttall about ICANN

Esther Dyson, the interim chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), told News Online that she was hopeful the Commerce Department would give its official support to the organisation before the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.

This follows an Icann letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Monday which responded to concerns over how the body had been set up.

Dyson: We're ready

"We believe we are now fully prepared to fulfil the mission identified in the White Paper - to allow the management of Internet names, addresses and protocols to be administered by a new, international, not-for-profit corporation that will be transparent and fully accountable to communities it serves," said Miss Dyson in the letter.

President Clinton's Internet guru, Ira Magaziner, said last week that Icann had not "sufficiently addressed the issues of openness and accountability."

There were accusations that the organisation was undemocratic and secretive at its first public meeting, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts this month.

By-law changes

The letter says revisions to Icann's by-laws would now mean more openness and transparency:

• Membership: Icann's Board of Directors will be elected by four membership pools including one drawn from the entire Internet community.
• Transparency: An open public meeting will be held alongside each of the four Board meetings planned every year. There will be detailed minutes published of the Board meetings.
• Independent Review: A process of independent review will be created for third parties to take action if they judge Icann to have broken its own by-laws.
• Conflicts of Interest: Votes on proposals put forward by a particular supporting organisation may not be decided by the votes of the directors of that organisation.
• Geographic Diversity: The permanent Board will have at least one representative from each geographic region. No region will have more than half the representatives on the Board.

Europe meeting

"We are managing the Internet resources, we are not governing the people on the Net and that's a very important distinction. But we're public in that we manage public resources. It's a new combination which is why it's Number One, controversial and Number Two, exciting," Miss Dyson told News Online in a phone interview from Budapest.

She is in Europe for Icann's second open meeting, to be held in Brussels on Wednesday sponsored by the European Commission.

The organisation is doing better here in winning recognition, with EC commissioner Martin Bangemann writing a letter to the US Commerce Secretary William Daley expressing his satisfaction with progress.

The private company Network Solutions will still be administering the .com, .net, .org and .edu top-level domain names for the next two years. But it will face competition by the middle of next year which Icann would help to promote.