ICANN: "ICANN has extended its Public Comment period for all of the new sTLD applications until 23.59 UTC 14 May."

This is a good thing, as most of the comments to date were submitted in the last 48 hours. Now, at least, we can respond to those who would torpedo any progress in the namespace (see below).

Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the ITU to Paul Twomey: "I refer in particular to the application for “.tel” sponsored by Pulver.com, but my comments below are also applicable to any application which could encompass usage of the E.164 numbering plan...[T]he E.164 international public telecommunication numbering plan is a politically significant numbering resource with direct implications of national sovereignty. It is also subject to a multitude of national approaches, regulatory provisions, and, in some cases, multilateral treaty provisions. Thus, any application for a new Internet top level domain name that envisage interfacing with the global telephony addressing system merits careful consideration."

And make no mistake, he means "careful consideration" as in "denial without review because the issue is too big to even start to consider until we have at least four more years of positioning, hand-wringing, and debate...."

New ICANN Staff Opportunity: "The continued expansion of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has created an immediate need for a Customer Relations Manager...."

The punchline is what the job is "officially" called.

Registersite.com's Lawyer to ICANN's Lawyer: "Our clients filed the lawsuit in, and will always exercise, good faith. They will not, however, be intimidated by ICANN's empty threats and bad faith efforts to scare the plaintiff into withdrawal."

From ICANNFocus.org: "For the year ended June 30, 2002, ICANN spent over $1.1 million on the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue. ICANN's legal bills amounted to almost 20% of their total revenues for the year."

And this is problem? From where I sit, if the world's corporations all spent 20% of their revenue on legal fees, the world would be a much better place. Trust me.

I'll be at the E3 Conference from May 11th through 13th. If you're planning to attend, drop me a note.

ICANN's Lawyer to Registersite.com's Lawyer: "Having reviewed plaintiffs' original and first amended complaints, I write to tell you that ICANN believes that you and your clients have brought this litigation in bad faith, at least as against ICANN...."

A new ICANN Announcement asks for nominations to the ccNSO Council on or before Wednesday, May 19th.

The rules are as follows: "Each [ccNSO] member can nominate up to 3 candidates for election to the ccNSO council and each member can second up to 3 candidates. Each geographic region elects 3 councillors and any ccNSO members in that region can nominate and second candidates. Candidates need be neither resident in the region nor a citizen of a country within the region in which they stand for election."

I'm at a firm retreat this weekend in Napa Valley and a conversation over lunch today turned to Google's GMail. One interesting question came up that I haven't seen discussed anywhere before: would the use of GMail by an attorney or a client waive the attorney-client privilege? In other words, does allowing a third-party to "read" mail via a computer program constitute a voluntary waiver of the privilege?

Did you know you can subscribe to this (or any other Blogware) weblog? A "subscribe" link is in the top menu bar. You'll receive the full text of, and all of the links for, anything I publish here via e-mail as soon as it is posted on the web.

ICANN Announcement: ICANN Issues Call for Transfer Dispute Resolution Service Providers.

And if any potential 'Transfer Dispute Resolution Service Providers' are seeking Transfer arbitrators, this is something I'd like to do.

This is cool: Mark Cuban has a weblog. I've always liked this guy, and from what I can see from his recent posts, he doesn't disappoint in his blog.

I was curious what software he was using, so I poked around a little bit. Cuban's blog is published through a service called Weblogs, Inc. , which I don't think I've ever heard of before. Weblogs, Inc. claims that it "is dedicated to creating trade Weblogs (a.k.a. “blogs”) across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product." The meaning of that business-speak mission statement doesn't quite register in this lawyer head of mind, but I think I'll browse around a little and see if I can figure it out.

Later: Got it. Weblogs, Inc. is a production of serial publisher/entrepreneur Jason Calacanis: "In the fall of 2003, Calacanis hatched the concept of the Weblogs, Inc. Network...." Now I know 'who' but I'm still trying to divine the meaning of stuff like this: "Weblogs, Inc. is creating a new layer on top of traditional business-to-business media."

The Nominating Committee for 2003, on which I was privileged to serve, has released its final report on the work it performed. (The report is here as a PDF.) If you're involved in ICANN, please read this. A thorough critique of the report will provide important guidance for the Nominating Committee of 2004. I'll have more comments on the 100-page report in the coming days.

Today's Daily Appellate Reports brings an interesting new case from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the opinion in Clement v. California Department of Corrections, Pelican Bay State Prison adopted a policy in 2001 that prevented prisoners from receiving any mail that included copies of material downloaded from the Internet. Since prisoners are denied access to the Internet itself, this policy about the content of 'snail mail' denied them access to material that is available only on the Internet. The Ninth Circuit found that the prison's policy violated the prisoner's First Amendment rights and did not serve a legitimate penological objective. The opinion makes sense precisely because the prison's policy didn't. Opinion here in PDF.

This also means that California inmates can now read weblogs for the first time.

ICANN Press Release: "The work of the 2004 Nominating Committee begins today when the Chair sends his formal invitation to the ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees to name their Delegates and Liaisons to serve on the Nominating Committee. "

The ICANN Board met yesterday by teleconference, to review the following agenda items:

• ccNSO Bylaws Clarifications
• Independent Review Panel Arrangements
• .pro Registry Agreement Deadline Extension
• Pending Redelegation Requests
• Litigation Update
• MoU Progress Update
• sTLD Application Process Update
• Other business

The resolutions adopted by the Board (on the ccNSO, independent review panels, .pro, .ps, and .ng) are here.

If you live in Canada, read this. Ross Rader writes: "I've accepted the nomination(s) to run for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) board of directors...."