ICANN is arguably straying from its original design as a private-sector, bottom-up, consensus-based technical coordination body. Unless it returns to that model, it is likely to be supplanted or radically altered by efforts to link its management of core Internet functions with broader interests in 'Internet governance.' Such a result could well threaten the revolutionary decentralized and democratic characteristics that have been the hallmark of the Internet’s promise to promotefree expression, civic discourse, and economic opportunity around the world.

in order to return to the bottom-up coordination model most likely to succeed, ICANN should:

• reaffirm the extremely limited mission that ICANN was created to accomplish;
• refrain from using ICANN’s coordination role as leverage to engage in policymaking in broader areas;
• support the consensus-based approach to decision-making that was core to the original concept under which ICANN created;
• reassess and ensure its contracts with registries provide both the reality and appearance of a limited approach to coordination of registry activities;
• continue its development of mutually-acceptable relationships with the other key entities who manage critical functions: the root server operators, regional addressingregistries, and the ccTLD community;
• adopt an approach to coordination that seeks to minimize policy impacts (such as, forexample, allocating valuable new generic top-level domains through objective technical criteria rather than subjective policy-based goals); and
• strengthen activities to engage diverse constituencies around the world in ICANN decision-making.