I don't believe that the Internet can be "governed," but it can be made better or worse by the actions taken during the meetings of the Internet Governance Forum. I've tried to put together a few thoughts for this week's organizational meeting. Given the time I've spent on it, you'd think it would be longer, but....a lawyer I respect greatly once told me that any legal brief longer than 8 pages was a loser: winning briefs are short, clear, concise. You'll see that philosophy at work on the set of draft principles for the Internet Governance Forum I penned the last few days. Here are the questions posed, and here is my attempt to get at most of the key issues for this week's meeting. It fits on one page. All of the submissions are archived here.

One of my favorite quotes in the contributions came from Elisabeth Porteneuve. On whether the IGF should have a Secretariat and if so what the Secretariat should look like, she recommended that the staff have two year contracts, renewable only once. As she put it: "There is nothing worse than gathering everything in Geneva, and providing life-term contracts."
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The Largest Registrar Takes on the Largest Registry. GoDaddy's Bob Parsons: "Under no circumstances should VeriSign be allowed to raise .com prices without cost-based justification....If VeriSign does request an increase, it needs to result in competitive bidding for the registry contract. This would certainly create lower prices, not higher, just as it did for the .net registry."

That's what Parsons said in the press release. Here's what he said on his weblog: "Hang on to your wallet! There’s a scam in the works. If it happens, it’s going to adversely affect all of us. VeriSign wants to control the .COM registry forever. VeriSign has somehow persuaded ICANN to propose a new contract where VeriSign will be the permanent and unregulated controller of the .COM registry...."

The .COM Agreement also was the subject of last night's Radio GoDaddy, "Bad News from ICANN."  Radio GoDaddy      
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It's not just GoDaddy that is still opposed to the ICANN-Verisign deal.  According to Internetnews.com, "Eight of the world's largest domain registrars have sent an open letter to ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf, stating their formal opposition to the revised proposition with VeriSign for continued control of the Internet registry. The eight signatories, which lay claim to 25 million domain names, or 57 percent of those currently registered, are GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Tucows, Register.com, BulkRegister, Schlund + Partner AG, Melbourne IT and Intercosmos Media Group." A copy of the letter itself is now up on the ICANN comment page.
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The .COM Registry Agreement and the litigation with Verisign are both on the agenda for ICANN's next Board meeting on 21 February 2006:
  • Review of Public Comments Regarding VeriSign Settlement Agreements;
  • Litigation Status Update;
  • Discussion of VeriSign Settlement Agreements;
  • Designation of São Paulo as 2006 Annual Meeting;
  • Consideration of ccNSO's ccPDP Results and Recommendations on Proposed ICANN Bylaws Changes;
  • Approval of Contractor to Conduct GNSO Review;
  • Designation of Academic Organization to Select Delegate for ICANN's 2006 Nominating Committee;
  • Approval of Director's Expenses;
  • Other Business
I have no idea what's going to happen.
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John Berryhill notes that Patent No. 6,980,990, issued on December 27, 2005, contains an interesting claim of right for "a method of displaying information on the availability of multiple names for registration as domain names...."
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Auf gut Glück! One of the troublesome things about Google is that it constantly forces its location choices on me. Yes, Google, when I typed in "www.google.com," I really did mean that I wanted to see www.google.com.  Google.ch isn't as helpful for me.

Coming Friday: A U-P-D-A-T-E on the I-G-F