Kiwi may be in running to head the global internet

Wellington barrister Peter Dengate Thrush, 51, who specialises in internet law, may have the inside running to replace a "father of the internet" , Vint Cerf, as chairman of cyberspace.

Mr Cerf – regarded as a "founding father" of the internet because he helped create its crucial TCP/IP protocol – will step down next month as chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

This international cooperative in Marina Del Rey, California, has become major powerbroker since being set up by the US Commerce Department to administer the addresses on the internet. It is responsible for the global co-ordination of the internet's system of unique identifiers such as.org,.com and country codes such as.nz.

Mr Cerf has played a key role as both its leader and spokesman since being nominated to the board in 1999, but will finish at the next annual meeting starting Los Angeles on October 29.

Yesterday, a French website (Domaines.info) specialising in news about internet "domains' reported that Mr Dengate Thrush and Mr Cerf's vice-chair , Italian Roberto Gaetano, were interested in taking on the job. Candidates for the job of ICANN's chairman can only come from board members.

A third contender, Steve Crocker, helped develop protocols for the Net's ancestor, the Arpanet, but is only a non-voting member of the board. He has just missed out on an expected nomination as a full board member.

Domaines.info reported this left Mr Dengate Thrush and Mr Gaetano, who has extensive experience of both ICANN and the domain name industry and speaks five languages.

"If chosen (he) could be ICANN's way of sending the message that it has become a truly global agency and wants to come out from under the US Commerce Department's shadow," the website said.

Mr Dengate Thrush also had a lot of ICANN experience and was such a respected member of the national registry community that he had been appointed to the board by a major player, the ccNSO (Country Code Names Supporting Organisation).

His work in civil litigation has included specialist work on intellectual property, competition and internet law, and he was the legal advisor to InternetNZ from 1996 to 1999, advising it on the formation of its registry company (Domainz) and acting in early domain name disputes. He chaired the body for two terms from 1999 and chaired its international affairs committee.

He developed and chaired a body of national domain name registry managers for the Asia Pacific region, and has been involved in ICANN since its inception. His three-year term on its board expires in seven months time.

Mr Dengate Thrush's wife Liz, 53 , father, Ron Thrush, 79, and his brother, Gavin Thrush, 46, and a family friend were all killed in a Lower Hutt motor crash in June last year. The crash was within weeks of ICANN's first Wellington conference, which considered its strategic plan through to 2009, continuing reform of its governmental advisory committee, and staged a public meeting on the stability of the domain name system.

The French website said Mr Gaetano and Mr Dengate Thrush each had a lot to offer "but no one candidate combines as many plus points as Cerf did".

One possible compromise could be a split of responsibilities between the candidates, according to their strengths.

The board will vote on its new chairman on November 2, after four days of discussions on major issues, including new generic top-level domains and – a discussion begun in Wellington – introducing multi-lingual top-level domains known as "internationalised" domain names.

- NZPA