Coming soon, to complement your DNS stock portfolio.

Excerpt from the ICANN Report: "The final scoring result gave a slight advantage to VeriSign over Sentan, who were in order followed by Afilias, Denic and CORE++. "

This is interesting...and sort of out of the blue (from my vantage point down here in the blogosphere). It's a set of "Core Principles and Corporate Governance Guidelines." Is it necessary?

Several initial impressions. First, I'm not sure why ICANN should commission an independent Executive Compensation study. From what I can tell, ICANN's compensation is consistent with the Los Angeles market -- and if you compare it to other non-profits, perhaps even on the high side. The benefits also appear terrific. What's to study?

Second, and most importantly, 5(d) and 5(e) ought to be stricken altogether. Board members are each different, and they bring different perspectives to the Board; those differences should be considered a strength. So should the differences between the Board and the staff. The idea that a Board member should not "undermine" the Chief Executive Officer strikes me as antithetical to the Board's obligation to exercise independent judgment. The Board shouldn't undermine the corporation (indeed, the law places obligations on Board members not to do so), but criticism of the CEO is expected. The Board's duty runs to the corporation itself, not the executive. In fact, you can easily imagine a variety of scenarios in which a Board member's perceived duty to the corporation and his or her loose, undefined obligation not to "undermine" the CEO would conflict. Under the law, the CEO always loses that fight.

Finally, I wouldn't recommend that any Board member sign the oath at the bottom of this. That part should be stricken too. These may be fine as aspirational goals, but so long as the statement of principles contains restrictions on a Board member's activities (e.g., Board members "should be careful... not to undermine [the CEO] by word or action"), they shouldn't be binding. California law governs the obligations of Board members to a corporation, and the Board should preserve its right to act to the full limit of the law in performing its duties.

Some folks in the press are reporting that ICANN will announce its decision on .NET later today. That's not correct. What ICANN will release today is the report from Telecordia ranking the applicants. For .ORG, ICANN ultimately followed the recommendation of the independent evaluation panel, and I would expect the Board to give great weight to Telecordia's recommendation, but the rankings released later today won't necessarily tell us which bidder will be awarded the .NET contract.

In four and a half years of blogging, I think this is my first cease and desist letter. Encirca takes issue with this sentence I posted yesterday: "Non-credentialed individuals can now register second-level .PRO names en masse through Encirca's new Bulk .PRO Registration form." What about that sentence is wrong?

Encirca claims that my statement is "false on its face." Really? Here's text from a marketing e-mail that Encirca sent to potential .pro registrants on March 2, 2005:

The entire text is here. So here's where I'm confused, Tom.
I wrote:
You wrote:
Didn't we say the same thing? But my statement is "false on its face"? You'll have to explain your logic.
So, Tom, when you ask me to write that I "know of no .pro domain names that have been registered without professional credentials," I can't do that. It's not true. I've seen scores of registrations for non-credentialed individuals, and I suspect there are thousands more.
And, just to be clear, I'm using the words "register" and "registered"  in the same way you used them when you wrote "Now anyone can register a second-level .pro domain name, like business.pro. No proof of credentials are required."

This just sent to ICANN's Press List: "The [.NET] report is being finalised and will be with ICANN sometime late on Monday, March 28th. That means ICANN will not be able to publish the findings and rankings until after the close of business on the U.S. West Coast time zone, approximately around 7pm PCT. We will post any further updates, as soon as possible, on the ICANN website. Apologies in advance for those on European or East Coast deadlines."

Non-credentialed individuals can now register second-level .PRO names en masse through Encirca's new Bulk .PRO Registration form.

Encirca has launched a new tool to let you know what four- and five-letter generic second-level .PRO domain names are still available.

I'm back in Los Angeles. After the rainiest season in 100 years, the city has never been so green. The hills behind my house make me think I'm living in Maui.  

RegistryPro has opened a discussion forum on the marketing and sale of .pro domain names to non-credentialed professionals. It looks like it will be about as effective as the ICANN comment forums. But it did prompt this letter from ICANN's Tina Dam.  

For one question posted on the forum, I already have the answer. Someone asked "Why aren't registrars other than Encirca offering this?" I've spoken with several registrars and the consensus seems to be that they will wait and see how it shakes out with ICANN. If what Encirca is doing is acceptable, then they'll offer it too. They'll have to because it will become a competitive issue. I get that. So Encirca is the test. The fraudulent registrations either stop now or we open up the TLD to everyone.

A fellow claiming to be a "Michael J. Silver," a volume .pro domain name speculator, has been posting a lot of comments below. He claims to be a lawyer, but I'm fairly certain he's not. The misspellings, grammatical errors and faux pomposity (that people often associate with lawyers) give him away. There are six "Michael J. Silver"'s licensed to practice law in the United States. None of them live in Biloxi, Mississippi.  

The nice thing about .PRO, of course, is that I don't have to take his word that he's a lawyer. He can simply sign an e-mail with his .PRO digital certificate to prove it....

Any idea how to delete trackback spam in a Blogware blog?

I really wish I could make it to the Domain Roundtable in Seattle in May. (Details here.) Given other things going on, I don't think it's going to be possible, but I'm working on it.

I sort of liked the name "Nigeria Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers."   

One PC Forum session that has stayed with me is the one on presence. As I understood it, "presence" on the Internet is availability and access. If you've used an instant messaging service, then you've already seen first generation "presence" at work ("I'm available," "I'm away from my computer," "Gone Fishing," etc.). The next generation of services will integrate the concept of presence into everything we do -- voice, IM, e-mail. They'll also integrate hierarchies into presence: I'm here for you, but not for you, or here for clients but not for friend, etc. Until they can guess what I want, however, I wonder how well it can work. As I long as I have to change the settings on something to update my status, it's not worth the effort.

I'm here.

ICANN announced today that it has completed negotiations with the registry operators of .TRAVEL and .JOBS. Congratulations to both groups!

Now I wonder how long until some enterprising travel agent  / domain name speculator starts leasing "generic/porn.travel" names....

A lot of buzz at PC Forum, and elsewhere, about the Yahoo! acquisition of Flickr. I've seen Flickr in my periphery vision for some time but haven't really paid much attention to it; I don't use it and I don't follow anyone's blog who does use it. There are dozens of places and ways to post photos to the web, so what makes Flickr special? I'm asking.

Enough about .PRO. Onward...

ICANN is seeking public comment about changing the bylaws to allow each GNSO constituency three representatives instead of two. The reduction in the size of the GSNO Council was one of the few reform recommendations that I agreed with, and I still think it would make the Council more capable of working effectively and reaching consensus. But...it's hard to debate the point when every single member of the Council wants to retain the status quo.

The status of Afrinic looks like it will be on the calendar for Mar del Plata.

ICANN held a Special (aka "Secret") Board meeting yesterday. The agenda included:

• Update on sTLD Applications and .NET successor registry process
• Review of .TEL (Telnic) sTLD application
• Delegation of .EU and EURid-ICANN Agreement
• Directors' Expense Reimbursements
• Designation of Academic Representative to the 2005 Nominating Committee
• Other Business

Not sure when the preliminary report will be published, but news of the .eu contract approval is already buzzing over the Internet.

I wonder what this says.

The Mar del Plata agenda is being frequently updated. Looks like a very busy week.

This Op-Ed is one reason not to put the DNS and IP address assignment under the umbrella of governments: "...the Federal Government should also lobby for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers organisation to be moved under the UN umbrella. ...Once a part of the UN, ICANN can be given the power to block IP addresses that host web sites that display child pornography." Even assuming ICANN had the power he thinks it has, it wouldn't stop with child pornography. What else would he give ICANN the power to take down?

Esther just asked for a show of hands. How many people use only proprietary software? How many use a mix of proprietary software and open source software? How many people use only open source software. The guy in front of me raised his hand to the last question. I looked up to see what he was running on his IBM Thinkpad. Windows 2000. The open source version, apparently.

Good stuff today on presence -- a very interesting concept -- and search.

Monday was good for framing questions, but not so helpful at answering them. For example, on health care, "How do you increase health and decrease costs of care in a system that compensates care but doesn't compensate health?" Good question, no clear answers. That's more or less the point of PC Forum though; new companies and technologies chasing hard problems with varying degrees of success.

I always enjoy the new company presentations, but I didn't see much this year that struck me as revolutionary. One company was promoting a sort of Applescript for Windows. Another company had an impressive calendaring program that was well ahead of Mozilla's Sunbird ...but for how long? Another company had a P2P system that connected you with persons actually known to you -- good idea generally, but I don't see it as a solution to the IP issues around file-sharing. (The presenters claimed to have spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal opinions, but I'm fairly sure that none of those opinions described a file-sharing safe harbor.)

One problem with company presentations generally is that, for obviou$ reason$, they tend to promote proprietary solutions over standards, but history shows that for the long term interoperability wins the day. As one presenter said, interop is usually the last stage of development. Too bad.

I had dinner with Paul Stahura and enjoyed a second night of great ICANN, DNS, and domain discussion. On to Tuesday...

That's the question I've been asked. My wife is a doctor (she registered pain.med.pro) and I'm a lawyer (I registered internet.law.pro). I'm the Secretary of her medical corporation (she's the President), and she's the secretary of Bret.Net, Inc. (I'm the President). We used our pair of credentials inside our two corporations to register second-level .pro domains corresponding to our third-level registrations. My wife now uses pain.pro as her primary domain name, and I use internet.pro for my audio commentary and podcasts. I've been asked 'how is this different from what Encirca is doing?'

It's completely different. First, my wife and I are both credentialed professionals, with third-level registrations corresponding to our second-level registrations. Second, in our case, the users of the second-level registrations are themselves credentialed professionals; we haven't leased our credentials to someone not entitled to them. (I did give a friend an internet.pro e-mail address -- but he's a lawyer too.)

Finally, the registration agreement clearly provides that "Registered Names are restricted to persons and entities that are credentialed by appropriate entities." That doesn't only mean that the registered data in the whois has to be that of a credentialed professional, it also means that the beneficial owner of the domain name registration has to be a credentialed professional. No one can really argue that the owner of this name is Encirca (or Encirca's lawyer and accountant). The beneficial owner of the domain name is someone else (see the admin and tech contacts in the whois), and no one has verified his credentials.

If the registrar leasing programs are permitted, what happens to the concept of sponsored TLDs? Doesn't this subvert the whole notion?

Chutzpah: "Addressing a new risk facing trademark owners, EnCirca, Inc. today unveiled a defensive registration service for trademark owners for the .pro domain. Called EnCirca ProParking, the new service allows owners to register their trademarks for a low annual fee to safeguard against cyber squatters. EnCirca's program was created to protect trademark owners and builds upon rapidly growing interest in the .pro domain."

So having single-handedly created the "risk," the company now offers the solution too? It's like Microsoft offering a suite of security software. Tom, I'm astounded. What are you doing?

Tim Cole: "The count of accredited registrars today stands at 467...with about 45 [applications] in the pipeline."

I made it. Just in time for the opening, actually. The first panel was, well, eclectic. A union organizer, a Harvard professor specializing in the study of the mind, and the Chief Yahoo of Yahoo! Was there anything to tie them together? They converged at various times on the topics of trust, trustees, and education. One ICANN moment worth mentioning.

On the concept of trust, one panelist noted that trust works well when trusted trustees are in charge, like Esther on the Board of ICANN. A few chuckles, including by Esther, followed by her comment "bad example." In truth, it wasn't a bad example. In spite of all its twists and turns in the early years, I learned to trust Esther on ICANN...and the organization has been better for her participation.

Dinner was terrific. I was speaking to a couple of guys about the topics of the day and in my right ear I was hearing talk about "domain names," "the DNS," and "registrars" -- words that have a catnip-like effect on me. It was Ray King and Richard Forman, two people who speak my language. Cool. Ray has an interesting new company in this space, and Rich, of course, knows the space inside and out. Good conversations.

Here are two pieces of correspondence worth reading: March 14, 2005 Letter from ICANN to Encirca (here in PDF) and the March 16, 2005 Letter from Encirca to ICANN (here in PDF).

Tom (and cc: to Marty), you know ICANN's correct on this one, right?  I don't see how your view that third-level domains are only for professionals and the second-level domains can be leased to anyone in the world, professional or not, is tenable. You seem to suggest that the only restriction on second-level registration is that a non-credentialed professional cannot misrepresent his or her professional accreditation. The reason this is wrong is that the presumption with a .pro registration is that everyone in the .pro TLD is a credentialed professional -- so every registration, at any level, by a non-credentialed professional is, per se, a misrepresentation.

And I'm not there yet. The airplane is delayed until 12:30 PST, which means I'll miss the opening remarks. What did we ever do in airports before Wi-Fi? Read, I suppose. I'll keep myself occupied the next two hours with a little of both.

Remarkably nice mix of music playing over the airport sound system. Nick Lowe, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley... like something I might mix. Or have my tastes just aligned with muzak now that I'm over 40...

At last year's PC Forum, I posted this item about Plaxo. It's still in the top 10 search engine results for "Plaxo," and one of the biggest drivers of traffic to this website. On any given day, I probably get as many looks to that item as I get about ICANN-related issues. Incredible. Plaxo can't be happy.

One of the presenters at this year's PC Forum is IntroNetworks. Nice stuff. I especially like the user interface. I'm eager to meet some of the people "close" to me to see how well the service actually works.

One of the things IntroNetworks asked users to do was list their "technology heroes." One of mine was Dave Winer.

The last time I was in the Bob Hope Burbank Airport I heard this. Today, "Please return to the security checkpoint to retrieve your television monitor." The stuff people can lose....

I'm converting my mailboxes from IMAP to POP, to allow some catching up on overdue correspondence over the next few weeks while I'm on airplanes. My virus checker is going crazy. I hadn't realized how many viruses I had avoided by keeping attachments on the server.

Great post from Wendy: "[E]ven law enforcement needs anonymity sometimes."

Isn't it amazing how fast Congress can act when it wants to?