I'm sure it won't be long until this domain name is registered: FireDePodesta.com

Wendy Grossman writes:  "Law professor Michael Froomkin and I decided in a moment of madness to drop by ICANN's offices in a spare hour last week when we happened to be in the neighborhood...."

Wish I were there:  Wendy's Blog: Legal Tags: Preventing the Internet Meltdown.

But I'm here.

What word would you choose to describe a hotel that charged 99 cents per minute for Internet access?

(Fortunately, I have my Blackberry and Blogware's "post-by-mail" tool.)

These pictures (Joho the Blog: Convention snaps) from David Weinberger are hard to believe. That's not a free speech zone, it's a cage.  

By the way, kudos to ICANN for getting the real-time transcripts from the Kuala Lumpur meetings posted quickly:  ICANN | Meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 19-23 July 2004.  For those of us following from afar, it makes a real difference.

Later: Ditto the kudos on the reports.

From the "Directions" section of Sergeant's Flea & Tick Shampoo for Cats: "For best results, the pet should be left in a latherered state for four or five minutes before rinsing with warm water."

New from Register.com:  IMPORTANT NOTICE. PLEASE NOTE THAT REGISTER.COM HAS MODIFIED ITS SERVICES AGREEMENT. THE REVISED SERVICES AGREEMENT WILL BECOME EFFECTIVE AND BINDING FOR YOUR EXISTING SERVICES 30 DAYS FROM JULY 16, 2004. NEWLY PURCHASED SERVICES ARE IMMEDIATELY SUBJECT TO THE REVISED SERVICES AGREEMENT.  IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY OF THE CHANGES TO THE SERVICES AGREEMENT, YOUR SOLE REMEDY IS TO TRANSFER YOUR SERVICE(S) TO ANOTHER PROVIDER.

New agreement here. Old agreement here. 

Here's the Board's discussion on the motion to double its budget. It's fascinating reading, so I thought I'd quote it in full....(read on)   more »

ITworld.com - ICANN ends Malaysia meeting with budget approval:  "Topping [ICANN's] list of accomplishments, according to ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf, was the group's approval Friday of its fiscal year 2004-2005 budget, which is set to grow from US$8.3 million this year to $15.83 million for the period covering July 1 to June 30, 2005."

Here's the resolution itself, though I don't see who voted in favor and who voted against. I can't believe it would have been unanimous. (That's not sarcasm. I suspect it might have been unanimous, because most of the Board's votes are, but I don't know.)  Having been at ICANN meetings where difficult decisions are made, I know that you can't always accurately gauge the appropriateness of a given decision from afar. Maybe this made sense in context. Susan Crawford, whose opinion I always respect, seems to think so...within limits.  Still, this is a mind-bending leap from the ICANN of a few years ago, even the post-reform ICANN (see below) of just last year.

Word via my e-mail inbox is that ICANN has used the ITU and WSIS as a sort of boogey man to justify the increase in staff and resources. I'm not convinced. Let the ITU do what it wants to do and the UN processes play out.  They're no threat to a small, contained ICANN that continues to go about doing its small, contained job.

Here's a PDF on the .ASIA new gTLD proposal, as presented on the registrars' mailing list. I've reviewed most of the new gTLD proposals and this one continues to strike me as "best in show."

This is from the recent archives, but required reading for the budget discussions: Note From A Concerned Reader. I didn't write it, but I agree with it entirely. What concerns me most about the current budget discussion is how removed it is from the work that went on in 2002-03 to create ICANN 2.0. After months of discussion and vigorous debate, the ICANN community reached a point of general agreement about the sort of organization ICANN should become, how its mission should be defined and limited, and, yes, even the amount of and funding mechanism for its budget. Those discussions seem completely lost on "the Twomey administration." So read this...and remember where ICANN was just last year.

A slideshow presentation in support of .cat.

Vint Cerf:  "ICANN's stewardship is international, bottom-up and multistakeholder. ICANN promotes user choice, predictability and a stable technological environment in which innovation is encouraged."

Ross Rader writes: "I'm utterly stunned."