"Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf is stepping down from his position of chair of ICANN at the end of this month. Cerf has chaired the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers for most of its nine-year existence, and has lent considerable expertise and credibility to the organisation. Now, at 64, Cerf has decided to bow out, and the search for a new candidate has begun.

Cerf made a plea on YouTube for members of the public to have their say about who should be the new ICANN chair. The decision will ultimately have an effect on important policy-making around such contentious subjects as the WHOIS database and new generic top-level domains. A leading candidate for the new position is Dengate Thrush, a lawyer who has been involved with ICANN since its inception, and who has precious expertise in Internet and intellectual property law. Dengate Thrush also used to chair internetNZ, the New Zealand .nz domain name registry.