2.2.2.2.2 The Japan ICANN Forum and chain reaction

Japan's earliest At-Large registration campaign was initiated in February 2000 by the Internet Governance Study Group (IGSG), a group originally established to promote popular understanding of ICANN as a whole. IGSG organized meetings on a bimonthly basis, giving lectures to audiences of around 30 to 50 people, mostly in Tokyo. Later, IGSG organized a number of meetings, three in Tokyo and one in Osaka, to specifically address the At-Large Election.

The second and more significant organizing activity around the At-Large election was the Japan ICANN Forum (JIF). JIF was originally proposed by JPNIC , the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (as the Ministry was then known) was consulted early on and provided advice and strong support during JIF's formation. This ad hoc body became the core organizer of the At-Large election campaign in Japan.

At the time of the election there was a strong fear (and confusion) in Japan that the only Board seat then held by a Japanese directoræProfessor Jun Murai had served on the Board since ICANN's creationæcould be lost if Professor Murai resigned his seat in 2000. This was perhaps the single biggest reason why the Japanese Internet community, along with the Japanese government and industry, teamed up so vigorously to promote voter participation: the perceived need to ensure a continued Japanese presence on the Board.

Another component of the At-Large campaign in Japan was JCA-NET , together with the Civil Society Internet Forum. JCA-NET organized their own campaign effort as a reaction to the top-down activity of industry and government and selected a candidate for member nomination, Ms. Yukika Matsumoto.

In May 2000, ICANN released the first batch of data collected from the At-Large registration process, data that included a country-by-country breakdown of recent registrations. These numbers showed Japanese registrations to be much lower than those from the US and some European countries and there were almost as many Koreans registered as Japanese. The Japanese response was quick. The JIF was officially launched on May 18, and it created a Web site to explain what the ICANN At-Large election was, how to register, and how to vote-entirely in Japanese, and with detailed instructions on the registration process. Many of the JIF's member companies, along with participating industry associations, e-mailed their employees to encourage them to register as At-Large members, and (later) instructed them how to vote and for whom.

JIF made a special effort to recruit more At-Large members in Japan. However, the most effective outreach channel came from outside the group. Though it is very difficult to analyze exactly where and how the large number of Japanese members came to register, there is sufficient evidence that a banner link on the Yahoo! Japan Web site was a major catalyst for public registration. The banner encouraged people to join the ICANN At-Large Membership, and linked to the JIF Web site. The registration campaign's language choices also proved very effective at appealing to nationalistic sentiment, claiming that, if you do not participate, there will be no Japanese representative on the ICANN board and our national interest could be endangered (paraphrased). The Yahoo! Japan banner was extremely successful, perhaps overly so; within a few weeks (even before the deadline for member registration), this direct link banner on Yahoo! Japan's top page was removed.

By early July 2000, it had become clear that Japan was dominating member registration by a massive number. This, in turn, encouraged renewed registration efforts in other countries within Asia, particularly in the People's Republic of China. It is believed that CNNIC started to organize an ICANN At-Large campaign, using their own Web site and some other popular portal sites, including a "lucky draw" where registered ICANN At-Large members could enter a contest to win a free PC. It was clear that the Japanese triggered an over-reaction from China, in an attempt to counter Japan's huge lead. Similar reactions were seen in Taiwan and, to a lesser degree, in Korea.

These massive registration attempts severely overloaded the ICANN's registration servers, almost to the point of breakdown, for much of July. This meant that many people worldwide were unable to register, unfortunately leading to rumors that ICANN had deliberately throttled the servers' capacity and were refusing connections from IP addresses from the Asia and Pacific region.

Under the rules created by the Election Committee, member-nominated candidates had to be "endorsed" by at least twenty of their region's activated members, or 2% of the eligible active members in their region, whichever was higher. Because the thresholds were calculated by region, the large number of registrants from Japan effectively prevented candidates from smaller countries getting on to the ballot through petition. Only one member-nominated candidate, Hongji Li from China, obtained more than the 2% threshold. Professor Kou-Wei Wu from Taiwan thus could not run since the 765 endorsements he received was short by just 3 votes from the target of 768 (out of 38,246 total activated members).

2.2.2.2.1 The Pre-Election Phase

2.2.2.2.3 Nominating members - nationalistic competition