The Names Council of ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization gathered over the weekend, halfway between ICANN's offices in Marina del Rey and Brussels, for a rare face-to-face meeting in Washington, D.C. The subject was new gTLDs. Should we have any new gTLDs? Everyone says yes. Should ICANN continue to introduce new gTLDs as part of its regular operations? Everyone says yes.

This new gTLD lovefest starts to fracture a bit on what selection criteria ICANN should use, what the minimum technical requirements should be for new registries, and what lessons we've learned, if any, from the "testbed" in 2000. The good news is that we're making progress and the contributions from the community and the constituencies are at a very high level. (The links above are to posts from the GNSO Council Chair, Bruce Tonkin, summarizing various aspects of the discussion. You'll want to read them.)
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The location of the GNSO meeting wasn't a coincidence. When not discussing new TLDs, some members of the Council were meeting with government officials -- Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Congresscritters and their  staffers -- to talk about one of the oldest TLDs: .COM.
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On that same subject, Stratton Sclavos has written a letter to ICANN Chair Vint Cerf asking him to approve the proposed ICANN-Verisign agreement in order to "resolve years of business disputes and litigation that have been expensive and disruptive." These were the same business disputes and litigation that Verisign initiated....but have no fear, Verisign now stands read to praise ICANN for helping the stability and security of the Internet by resolving those very business disputes on Verisign's preferred terms.

If you can stand reading the letter all the way through to the last page, you'll find a real gem waiting for you there. Without any touch of irony, Sclavos decides to take on his eight biggest customers on the battleground of greed:

We are aware of a recent letter to you from eight registrars who are attempting to influence ICANN’s processes with respect to the proposed agreement. These eight registrars plainly neither speak on behalf of the larger Internet community, nor evince an understanding of, or concern for, the requirements for a stable and secure operation of the DNS. They speak only in their own narrow economic interests.

If I'm Verisign, I can think of lots of winnable fights I could pick with the world's eight largest registrars, but I'm not sure I want to fight over which of us is the more greedy.
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The ICANN Board of Directors will have an opportunity to chuckle over the Sclavos letter this afternoon on a special teleconference. The agenda for today's meeting is:
  • Discussion of VeriSign Settlement Agreements;
  • Consideration of ccNSO's ccPDP Results and Recommendations on Proposed ICANN Bylaws Changes;
  • Approval of Director's Expense;
  • Conflicts Committee recommendation on Director's Annual Statements; and,
  • Other Business.
If they want additional reading, they can check out Bob Parson's blog: "The .COM money scam. A monopoly for VeriSign. What to do when $450 million is not enough?" Or perhaps this press release from BulkRegister might make interesting reading (check the tables). ADD: Or maybe these letters from U.S. Representative Rick Boucher to the U.S. Department of Commerce and to the U.S. Department of Justice might make interesting reading. (Thanks to the reader who sent these in.)
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It's only a two hour meeting, but if there's time on today's call, perhaps one of the Board members can ask fellow Board member Hualin Qian for an update on the Chinese root announcement yesterday.

Coming Tomorrow: "IPR73: Revisiting ICANN at the Crossroads."