Roberta Romano, a Professor at Yale Law School, has a thought-provoking piece in the current issue of Forbes titled "Pick Your Regulator." Her discussion of regulatory competition made me wonder about applying the same principles to ICANN. If you were a registry (ccTLD or gTLD), and you had to be regulated by some entity, would you choose ICANN, the ITU, your own national government, or something else?

New at Tucows: Online Services Directory. Cool. (Caveat: I'm a stockholder.)

From a December 3, 2003 filing: "Plaintiff's Dotster, Inc., GoDaddy, Inc., and eNom, Inc. by and through their respective counsel of record hereby request dismissal of this matyter with prejudice...." Settlement or capitulation?

Kieren McCarthy: "If you don't tell the world your email, home address and telephone number you could face a seven-year jail sentence and a $150,000 fine under new legislation that the US Congress is trying to push past today...."

I haven't been able to ponder enough over the language of the recent whois bill to have an opinion about it, but the one thing that immediately bothers me about the hearing yesterday is that people deeply involved in aspects of ICANN and the GNSO were testifying in favor of Congressional action. I can't yet put my finger on why, but I find that fact alone disturbing. If you support private-sector leadership of the issues within ICANN's mandate -- and I do -- then you can't go running to Congress when the course of discussions moves in what you feel is the wrong direction. How can you play both sides? Perhaps ICANN is too open; maybe it should only be open to participation from people who believe in the principles underlying it. Or perhaps ICANN should just close membership to people with an address inside the Beltway.

This isn't the same as Karl Auerbach's lawsuit. That was both a good idea and completely consistent with support for private sector governance. Karl was trying to make ICANN better, not taking a policy disagreement into an alternate forum. If you want to see who is undermining ICANN, it's not the critics; it's the empty suits (and skirts) in Washington who push legislation like this behind closed doors while pretending to participate in ICANN's processes.

Susan Crawford: "Tomorrow morning, at 10 am in 2141 Rayburn, the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property is holding a hearing on 'Internet Domain Name Fraud -- New Criminal and Civil Enforcement Tools' At that hearing, the Subcommittee will be considering a new Whois bill creating new penalties for people who provide false data when registering a domain name. We need to raise our collective eyebrows at this bill...." Required reading.

When I received e-mail last night with the subject "Become a Pro," I assumed it was news about the impending launch of the .pro TLD. No such luck. Just a piece of spam that slipped past my filters with the promise that an herbal supplement could tranform me into a porn star. At least it prompted me to look for more news of .pro's imminent launch. No information anywhere. I expect that the February, 2004 live date will slip just like all the ones before.

This is incredible: "By late Tuesday, Jan. 27, experts estimated that 20 percent of the world's e-mail traffic was attributable to the virulent worm known as Mydoom...."

This may be old news, but I just noticed that a non-existent domain name typed in Internet Explorer (for Windows) takes you to MSN's Search Page. A link on that page then asks whether you would like to "Check availability or register the domain name." If you click on that, you're at a MelbourneIT/MSN registration site.

I know the MSN Search Page isn't new, but I hadn't noticed the MelbourneIT registration page before.

I wonder how many of Microsoft's users will be surprised to find that if they register a domain name through that page, they're agreeing to submit to Australian law: "18. Governing Law. Registrant agrees that this Registration Agreement is governed in all respects by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Victoria, Australia. By submitting this Registration Agreement, Registrant consents to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the Courts of Victoria (including the Victorian Registry of the Federal Court of Australia) and all courts hearing appeals from such Courts."

Thomas Roessler: "Where are the minutes from 01/15?" I'm glad I'm not the only one who cares about this stuff.

Wow, this strikes me as grossly irresponsible. In reading the allegations (copy of the complaint is here, in PDF format), I'm struck by how little research the lawyers did into the allegations they've made. They even made allegations about Verisign's responsibilities under its registry agreement with ICANN, but claimed that they didn't "yet" have a copy of the contract. Amazing. Hey guys, it's on the web! And while they're doing their homework, the lawyers should pay attention to this too.

The GNSO's Intellectual Property Constituency has been doing some interesting work lately.

Monika Ermert, in The Register: "For the first time in Internet history there are more DNS rootservers outside the United States than within...."

The New York Times takes on the controversial practice of 'Google-bombing'.

Brock Meeks on "Fort N.O.C.'s": The "heart" of the Internet, the so-called "A" root that is the Internet's master addressing computer, resides here on the third floor of a nondescript four story building, housed in massive flat-black aluminum cage that looks like it could double as a gym locker for a mountain troll....

From the PR Wire: Solis (Japan Registry) Signs Exclusive Partnership With Tucows in Japan. Sounds like a good move (and, disclosure caveat, I'm a Tucows stockholder).