This was one of the more interesting meetings I attended yesterday. If you could listen to only one of the podcasts I've posted, this is probably the one I would choose. (1 Hour, 15 Minutes / 4.6 Megabytes).

In the past, Registrar meetings with the Board were all about speaking truth to power. This one was more tame. This mp3 file is from the Registrar Constituency-ICANN Board meeting on Tuesday, 5 December 2007. Sound quality is only fair. (50 Minutes / 3.6 Megabytes).

Is this the first ICANN video to be posted on YouTube?

Here's the transcript, with a link to the audio, courtesy of Discourse.net.

Today is the day when the ICANN Board of Directors does shuttle diplomacy, attending all of the constituency meetings and meeting with the various advisory committees. The ALAC meeting was recorded and is attached here as a podcast/mp3 file (50 minutes / 3.2 megabytes).

Pictures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bretfausett/.

ICANN has posted a comment about the Board's decision to rule on the .TRAVEL wildcard service, specifically referencing my blog comment from last week. The post admits a mistake in announcing a December 7th comment deadline, but then, in my view, goes a bit too far in the defense of the Board's decision to move forward. If you announce a deadline for public comment -- right down to the precise hour of the last day in which comments will be accepted ("18:00 UTC (10:00 PST) on 7 December 2006") -- I don't think it's reasonable to say that you were "following a well-defined process" when you made a decision two weeks before that deadline. The public has a right to rely on the announcements made by ICANN, rather than having to chase their accuracy through a review of the bylaws, contracts and consensus policies. Kudos for acknowledging the error and pledging to do better, but the defense of the comment period and the promise that ICANN will continue to review comments even after the service has been rejected, goes too far.

Look, the Tralliance wildcard was a bad idea and no period of comment was going to see it resurrected from the RSTEP waste bin. This is just a big process point. On this RSTEP report, I was satisfied with the conclusions. The next time though? It may not be such an easy decision. For the closer calls, and they will come, we all may want to submit something in response. And even though I know the ICANN bylaws and contract provisions and consensus policies as well as anyone, I'm probably going to rely on that ICANN announcement on the ICANN home page for my comment deadline.

In what has to be one of its most jaw-dropping repudiations of the value of public input ever, the ICANN Board has disapproved the .TRAVEL wildcard proposal two weeks before the public comment period was scheduled to end.

Folks, it doesn't get any more clear than this what ICANN thinks of your input.

Here's the public comment announcement, dated November 9, 2006:

And here's the Board's resolution of November 22, 2006:


All of which has the folks at Tralliance wondering what happened:


Of course there was no immediate explanation. What on earth could they say?

Early press reports this morning that the U.S. Department of Commerce had "approved" the proposed .COM Agreement submitted by ICANN-Verisign appear to be a bit off the mark, perhaps in important ways. Yes, it appears that the DOC has approved a new .COM registry agreement for Verisign, but no, it's not, it seems, the same deal that ICANN submitted to the DOC for approval. Obviously, this requires greater reading and analysis from everyone. Details here, from the NTIA.

ADD: So the "approval" of the ICANN-Verisign agreement, as submitted by ICANN, is technically accurate, but by a new Amendment 30 to the Cooperative Agreement between Verisign and the United States, the DOC apparently has placed limitations on Verisign's ability to exercise certain rights and conditions under its new Agreement with ICANN.

Now the analysis is whether the U.S. restrictions will be meaningful. Still reading....

MORE: On further review, it appears as though the DOC placed only two limits on Verisign. The first limitation is in Section 2 which provides that Verisign cannot enter into any renewal agreement with ICANN when this new agreement expires in 2012 unless and until the Department of Commerce first determines that renewal would "serve the public interest." The "public interest" is rather loosely defined in the Amendment, but it does mention Verisign's compliance with Consensus Policies, contractual and technical terms of the Agreement, investment in infrastructure, and the provision of registry services at "reasonable prices." The second limitation is simply federal antitrust law. In Section 5, the DOC writes that "This approval is not intended to confer federal antitrust immunity on Verisign with respect to the Registry Agreement."

STILL MORE: What's even more interesting about the "public interest" analysis, and I'll certainly write about this more from Sao Paulo, is that whether the "public interest" is served by renewal of Verisign's registry agreement will be determined by the United States Department of Commerce. Certainly a policy issue, we can't even say now, in 2006, what the policy personnel in the United States will look like in 2012. We face Presidential elections in 2008, which means that renewal will be determined at the tail end of a first Presidential term for DOC/NTIA officials appointed by.....John McCain? Hilary Clinton? Barak Obama?

And this only underscores the real problem, -- where we'll see all the fireworks in Brazil -- which is why will the "public interest" be determined solely by the United States?

If you like the incumbent GNSO Councilors, you'll be disappointed to learn that they won't be in office much longer. At yesterday's council meeting, the Council passed a resolution, over substantial minority objection, providing that "term limits for GNSO Council members should be adopted immediately by the GNSO Council with no grandfathering except in connection with the ability of a council member to serve out their existing term. A council member can serve no more than two consecutive terms (regardless of duration)." This resolution doesn't implement term limits by itself, only the ICANN Board can change the bylaws to do that, but it's coming.

From the BBC Online: "Welsh websites could soon choose a .cym address rather than .uk, if a campaign backed by assembly members succeeds.... Liberal Democrat AM Peter Black has endorsed the campaign on his weblog, describing it as an opportunity for Wales to assert its identity online. He said: '...Catalonia has a TLD, so why not Wales?'"

ICANN's Registry Services Technical Evaluation Panel (another acronym to learn: "RSTEP") has issued its report on the security and stability effects of a new registry service -- a wildcard at the second level of the .TRAVEL TLD -- that Tralliance proposed several months ago.

This is from the RSTEP's Summary of its Findings:


The RSTEP report is now subject to final comment before going to the Board for consideration and review.

I can't find any relevance to ICANN's mission in the top story linked under 'Announcements' on the ICANN web page.

Does this make any sense to anyone? Why is this on the ICANN web site?

Robert X Cringely: "While China is building a national resource, our government is letting companies turn the public Internet into an expensive private toll road." Must reading.

I'm hearing from several members of the ICANN community that the Second Life software doesn't run on their computers. At the same time, I've heard from others that Ninca Island is a terrific idea for a virtual place to gather for those who aren't attending ICANN meetings in person. For the time being, I'm painfully aware that many ICANN participants will be locked out of Second Life because of bandwidth and/or hardware issues. Believe me, you won't be missing anything. This isn't -- yet* -- an official ICANN venue, and it's still very experimental. I expect lots of computer crashes and frustration. I think we can learn a lot about remote participation through the SL experiment, however, so I hope that those who can get SL to work will join in.

I've given several in world private tours over the last few days. If you'd like to arrange a meeting inside Second Life to receive a personal tour of the facilities and learn a few tips about how to maximize the SL experience, drop me a note. I'm not just your Ninca Island bartender, I also provide guided tours.
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* Yes, I said "yet." I am hopeful that we (as in the collective ICANN community "we") can demonstrate that virtual world participation is not only possible but productive and cost-effective. I hope that, down the road, ICANN can adopt something like Ninca Island for real meetings. Looking into my crystal ball, however, I'd say that the reality of productive, virtual world conferencing is at least two years away. So it you're not on this bleeding edge of experimentation, don't worry. We'll catch up to you down the road.

Now that ICANN has changed its RSS feed so my aggregation loop doesn't choke on it, I've given the official ICANN RSS feed the most prominent place on my icann.blog.us web site. This means that whatever ICANN publishes -- even an item it might wish to title 'Bret Fausett is a Big, Fat Idiot' -- will write to the upper left column of my icann blog. I have a few other items syndicated there as well. If you're writing about ICANN regularly and I've missed your weblog's RSS feed, drop me a note and I'll add it to the syndication column. You can title your items whatever you'd like, and they'll appear in the left margin of this weblog.


Competition at its best. I'm at the Starbucks in La Canada, California, drinking coffee and checking email while I wait for the morning traffic to subside...but I'm not using the Starbucks-T-Mobile wifi. As I started to log in this morning, I searched for nearby networks and saw a wifi hotspot from the competition next door. The hotspot is named "Goldstein's Bagel Bakery Public." What an idea: compete with the Starbucks next door by providing free wifi. And great advertising too. Next time I wait out the traffic, I'll stop next door.