The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) is an advisory committee to ICANN, the organization that administers the Internet's Domain Name System and addressing system. Its mission is to act as an advocate for the interests and viewpoints of the global individual users of the Internet.
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The ALAC is composed by fifteen members, three from each of the five geographic regions used by ICANN for geographical diversity requirements.
As a part of its mission, the ALAC reaches out for groups of individual Internet users all around the world - identified as At-Large Structures (ALSes) - and encourages them to apply for accreditation by ICANN. Once accredited, these groups can participate in the five Regional At-Large Organizations (RALOs), regional groupings that host discussions at a regional level. In turn, each RALO appoints two members of the ALAC (for a total of ten members out of fifteen). This builds an open, bottom-up mechanism to select the ALAC members. The remaining five members of the ALAC are appointed by ICANN's Nominating Committee.
The ALAC appoints one non-voting representative to the ICANN Board, one non-voting representative to the councils of the Generic Names Supporting Organization and to the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, and liaisons to ICANN working groups and task forces. It also appoints five members (one per geographic region) of ICANN's Nominating Committee. It has some statutory authority, though limited, to influence ICANN's policy making activities. However, it usually shares its opinions through non-binding advisory statements sent to the ICANN Board.
The ALAC was created in 2002, as one of the changes introduced in the so-called "ICANN 2.0" reform, with the purpose of providing a viable mechanism for participation by a significant number of active individual users of the Internet from around the world. Its structure was studied through the At-Large Advisory Committee Assistance Group, which made a proposal that was then approved by the ICANN Board.
The first ALAC was appointed in January 2003. Since the Regional At-Large Organizations did not exist yet, the committee was marked as "interim" and the ten regional members were appointed by the ICANN Board instead. The initial membership included the former ICANN Chairman Esther Dyson. The initial Chairman was Vittorio Bertola, and the first appointed liaison to the ICANN Board was Roberto Gaetano, and Thomas Roessler to the GNSO, who in December of 2004 left his position to Bret Fausett. In March 2006, Bertola left the Chairmanship to Annette Muehlberg; in December 2006, Bertola was appointed as the new Board liaison, Alan Greenberg as GNSO liaison, and Siavash Shahshahani as CCNSO liaison.
Initially, there was widespread concern that the ALAC would fail as a result of a perception of disenfranchisement common to many Internet rights groups - especially the North American ones - that followed the demise by ICANN of the original At Large election plan. However, the number of accredited At Large Structures grew slowly but steadily, reaching 100 in the first months of 2007. In December 2006, the first Regional At-Large Organization - the Latin American RALO was formally accredited by ICANN. Further RALOs for Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific were expected to be accredited in the first half of 2007.
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