Ex-Hacker Now a Member of Powerful Internet Board.

Byline: Daniel Rubin

Nov. 1--BERLIN, N.J.--Andy Mueller-Maguhn hates governments; as a boy, he contemplated joining Germany's terrorist Red Army Faction. He hates neckties, which he says strangle creativity, and he hates lawyers.

But most of all, he hates America's domination of the Internet, and now he's in a position to do something about it.

Mueller-Maguhn, 29, a former hacker, has just been elected to an indefinite term on the powerful board of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, the nonprofit group that determines who gets what domain name on the Internet. A prominent German newspaper called his election "the worst-case scenario" for the United States.

"What I'd like to see is the Internet as a parallel universe of cultures that coexist, not a one-world government putting their rules all over the Net, which is what the United States is …