[alac] For the agenda: research on public Internet users' interests
We talked briefly in Vancouver about commissioning some research into Internet users' interests as related to ICANN policy matters. Many interested members of the general public are unaware of ICANN and are unlikely ever to participate in an At-Large Structure. Better outreach will pick up only some of the impacted public. Individual domain name registrants and others who might like to register domains, for example, are affected by gTLD policies that impact price or availability of names. That they may not find it worthwhile to join an organization to protest a $1/year increase in the cost of a domain name does not mean they are unaffected by it. To hear from this interested but ininvolved public, we should consider conducting surveys, either direct-dial like those of the Pew Internet project or Gallup polls, or "listening" outreach to general-purpose organizations that include Internet users. For the Wellington agenda, I'd like to consider what issues we might ask about in pilot research, and how to get that research started. New TLDs and WHOIS disclosure/privacy would be obvious areas in the U.S. IDNs would be valuable if we're able to conduct pilots in a few countries including some with non-ASCII scripts. By "pilots," I'm not suggesting that even this research will be representative of all Internet users, but that we'll be able to see more clearly the viewpoints in at least some segments, as well as get a better sense of what it would take to reach representative samples. --Wendy -- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org |