Have you ever wondered how one of the Internet's premier trademark lawyers makes legal decisions? Here's the video.

Correspondence of 16 December 2005 from ICANN's Kurt Pritz to ICANN-Accredited Registrars: "ICANN is pleased to announce that gTLD registrars have approved theregistrar-level fees as described in ICANN's Adopted Budget for Fiscal Year 2005-06. As of today, 142 registrars, representing over 70% of registrar-level feespaid, have expressed their approval (exceeding the two-thirds approval required)."

Dave Winer writes: "It seems the music industry must have had a heads-up this was coming because a few days ago they said they were going to go after lyrics sites. Google's music search leverages the lyrics sites." Now, why on earth would the music industry try to shut down lyric sites? Folks, no one can understand what the people in the music industry are singing, and even the lyric sites frequently disagree on the correct words to songs. What makes a lawsuit a good idea?

If the headline above has any meaning for you, you're probably not independent enough to bid on this RFP. But for those of you who don't know why a GNSO Review is pending, what the GNSO actually is, or how the work product of this review will be used, and you're interested enough in ICANN to be reading this weblog, you're the perfect person to submit a bid. Seriously.

A brief economics tutorial from once-upon-a-long-time-ago economist and ALAC member John Levine. The subject is the price of .COM registrations.

From a podcaster: "If your mp3 is designed to promote another product or is a teaser for another media file, it's not a podcast, it's a commercial." Bingo. By this definition, with which I completely agree, a significant percentage of the iTunes Top 100 Podcasts consists of commercials.

This is an important story, worth reading, that points to one of the underlying reasons that ccTLD delegations are made to private-sectors entities, not governments. The teaser: "Reporters Without Borders condemned censorship by the Kazakh government, which has removed the right to use the .kz suffix from two websites it finds troublesome...."

Sean Michael Kerner, writing in Internet News: "Moving to IPv6 will present a number of challenges for the U.S. federal government, not the least of which is the associated price tag, which could hit $75 billion." How on earth is that possible? Sounds like the same sort of pumped up number we saw around Y2K issues.

This week's This Week in Tech includes a discussion of .XXX and ICANN's recent decision to defer consideration of ICM Registry's new TLD application.

ICANN Summary of Comments: "The following is a summary of the comments that have been submitted by members of the community in all of the fora mentioned above since the proposed settlement agreement was posted."

ICANN Analysis of Comments: "The analysis below is intended to bring into focus the key issues associated with the proposed settlement of the long-standing dispute between ICANN and VeriSign."

I sent a note about the summary and analysis to the ALAC. The comments on Registrar list are worth reading too.

National Arbitration Forum: "In order to better serve our Parties and Panelists, NAF has updated the Supplemental Rules that direct the administration of domain name disputes heard by its Panel. Most of these updated Supplemental Rules take effect on January 1, 2006."

In today's show, I talk about how users listen to this podcast...or don't. And, incredibly, I have a message for everyone who's not listening. In other words, it's the obligatory podcast about the podcast. (iPro Radio 66 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "Canterbury" by Kevin Johnson.

In today's show, I talk about the new GAO report "Internet Management: Prevalence of False Contact Information for Registered Domain Names." I'm not sure what I say is completely accurate. (iPro Radio 65 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "And the Good News Is..." by Sean Patrick McGraw (courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network).

RadioGoDaddy for this week: "In an unexpected twist, ICANN 'deep-sixes' the .XXX extension yet again. What happened? Our ICANN expert and representative, Tim Ruiz, sheds some light on this surprise development." The ICANN discussion begins at 49 minutes into the show.

From the U.S. Government Accountability Office: "GAO estimates that 2.31 million domain names (5.14 percent) have been registered with patently false data--data that appeared obviously and intentionally false without verification against any reference data--in one or more of the required contact information fields."

Okay, I caved in to the pressure and sent ICANN one of those "concrete, actionable" proposals the Board has been seeking. I said that ICANN should (a) unbundle the four major issues (registry services, root publication, funding, and .COM), (b) move forward with the registry services and root publication aspects of the proposals, (c) create a special task force on funding, and (d) move forward on .COM under the renewal provision of the current agreement. Now the ball's in your court, ICANN.

From last week's ICANN Announcement: "We ask the staff to accept any further written comments until December 7 and to produce for the community a public report summarizing, analyzing and organizing the feedback provided on the .com and settlement agreements by December 11."

'Until December 7.' That's today.

Tracy Berna is writing "Left Turn at Albuquerque." Here's her description: "L.A. is weird enough for the average person. Just imagine it through the eyes of someone who gets paid to hit ducks with anvils. Your tour guide is a late 30's, female, single, animation writer."

I'm subscribed.