U.S. Request for Information: "The Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (DOC/NTIA) is exploring options for Contractor performance of three, interdependent technical Internet coordinating functions...." The rumor in the hallways is that Neustar has been lobbying the government to put the IANA function out to bid and plans to submit a proposal. If this goes out to bid, Neustar won't be the only organization that will submit a proposal.

ICANNWatch: "It's fun...to speculate as to who may want this role: the EU? the ITU? the IAB/IETF? Verisign?"

Here's the text of the comment submitted yesterday by ICANN's At Large Advisory Committee on the proposed Verisign settlement:

Dear Dr. Cerf and Members of the Board of Directors:

The At Large Advisory Committee ("ALAC") has carefully reviewed and considered the revised agreements between ICANN and Verisign and does not believe that the revisions address the serious concerns of registrants previously described by the ALAC in both its written submissions and its meeting with the Board in Vancouver. In order to fulfill ICANN's role of promoting and sustaining a competitive environment, the ALAC recommends that the Board take the following actions:


The ALAC understands that one of the litigation risks to ICANN is that the legal foundation on which ICANN was built will be eroded. We believe that this is a risk worth taking. An ICANN that cannot ensure competition and protect registrants from monopolistic pricing is not an ICANN worth retaining.

Respectfully submitted,
At Large Advisory Committee

The rumors of Joe Sims' retirement from ICANN were premature. He's back, defending the Verisign deal: "[T]here are multiple protections built into the agreement against exploitation of registrants—not perfect, because the market for domain name registrations is not perfectly competitive, but in our judgment sufficient under the circumstances." I had heard rumblings from ICANN staffers that Mr. Sims was the principal architect, on the ICANN side, of the revised Verisign agreements, but I hadn't believed it was true....

Yes, I mean right now. Drop everything. It's really good. The Villain in the ICANN-VeriSign Struggle is the U.S. Government, by Mike Roberts.

It begins: "ICANN Board Chair Vint Cerf now works for a company whose motto is, 'Do No Evil.' So how could Vint and his fellow board members be engaged in a massive capitulation to the enterprise greed of dot-com operator VeriSign?..."

We've finished our two-day consultation on the creation of the Internet Governance Forum. I'll have many personal impressions to convey in the days ahead, but in the meantime, you can read the transcripts of the proceedings on the IGF website:

• Thursday Morning (16 February 2006);
• Thursday Afternoon (16 February 2006);
• Friday Morning (17 February 2006);
  
• Friday Afternoon (17 February 2006); and
• Archive of Written Submissions.

The best summary of where we are right now is the closing statement of Chair Nitin Desai. For ease of reference, I took the liberty of excerpting Mr. Desai's closing from the real-time transcript and putting it into this PDF file. That's the best summary of what will happen next and what issues were left unresolved.

In addition to the posts here, you also should read the following weblogs:

• Annette Mühlberg at WECANN.net;
• Kieren McCarthy at KierenMcCarthy.co.uk;
• Thiru Balasubramaniam at From Geneva;
• Georg Greve at Fellowship of the FSFE;
• Group Blog of ISOC at ISOC@WSIS.

Any I missed?

An interesting idea came up over lunch today: do we need an ICANN exit plan? ICANN is broken in very fundamental ways. Do we reform it (again) or just prepare an exit plan?

An eight-page letter, dated 11 February 2006, from ICANN CEO Paul Twomey to GAC Chair Sharil Tarmizi has been posted to the ICANN website. It concerns .XXX and bears a striking similarity to the seven-page letter Vint Cerf sent to Peter Zangl a few weeks ago. ICANN is obviously making a record in advance of voting on  .XXX at or just after the Wellington meeting.

Here are my running notes on this morning's session...   more »

If you thought your head was filled to capacity with Internet acronyms, you need to find space for one more: IGF. It stands for the "Internet Governance Forum," and it's off to a pretty good start. (I'll also be tagging my IGF-related posts with "IGF".)

With just half of our two-day planning session complete, some things are already clear. From what what I heard on Thursday (morning session transcription | afternoon session transcription) and read in the written submissions, a substantial majority of governments and private sector participants agree on the following:

• The IGF should meet only once per year;
• Each IGF meeting should last three or four days;
• The IGF should be a multi-stakeholder forum, with participation open to anyone with expertise and interest in its work;
  
• The IGF's agenda should be set by a multi-stakeholder Programme Committee;
• The IGF Secretariat should be based in Geneva, with Marcus Kummer assuming the role of Secretary (and at a cocktail party Thursday evening, the Swiss government announced that it would fund and support a Geneva-based Secretariat, including assuming the costs of participation in its work by those in developing countries);
  
• The agenda for the initial meeting later this year probably should focus on two or three core topics, including capacity building; multilingualism, and spam (many other topics were floated, but these were the three recurring themes); and,
• The IGF should use the tools of the Internet to encourage remote participation.

All of this is very good.

Now for the things that still have not been decided:

• What does "multi-stakeholder" really mean? We know it means that anyone can participate in the IGF through the Internet. Most people also assume it means that anyone with expertise and interest can attend the IGF meeting in person. Many people also believe it means that anyone can speak during the IGF's sessions. What is quite unclear, however, is how the IGF will make recommendations, if it does so at all, and if it does make recommendations, how will they be made? If the IGF holds a vote, who votes?
• Who picks the membership of the IGF's Programme Committee and/or Steering Committee?
  

Maybe we'll find answers on Friday.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Bret Fausett, and...   more »

Last night's Radio GoDaddy is worth a link of its own. Bob Parsons, Tim Ruiz, Nima Jones, and David Lawrence talk about what the ICANN-Verisign deal would mean for registrars and registrants. Must listening. If you have iTunes, you can subscribe by clicking on this purple icon: . The RSS feed is here: . The whole show is entertaining, but the ICANN-Verisign conversation begins at 8 minutes, 30 seconds into the show. After the break, it resumes at 20 minutes, 15 seconds.  Nima Jones has a terrific question for Bob Parsons: "Do you feel disrespected?"

And the quote of the hour comes from Bob Parsons. What signal is ICANN sending to the world when it announces that this is a deal worth signing? "We are inept. Replace us."

Meanwhile, Marcus Faure reports to the Registrars: "I would like to alert those of you who have not been in the teleconf with ICANN staff last Monday that ICANN staff is convinced that the revised settlement agreement should be signed and that they will recommend this to the Board." Draw your own conclusions.

At the end of the morning session, Mr. Nitin Desai -- the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Advisor for the World Summit on the Information Society and the Chair of the current meeting -- posed a list of very thoughtful questions for the Internet Governance Forum ("IGF"):

    (a) Everyone accepts that the IGF should include multi-stakeholder participation, but what does this actually mean?

    (b) Everyone accepts that the IGF should have a program committee or a steering committee, but how should this be accomplished? Who will pick the members of the steering committee? What is the process for their selection?

    (c) Everyone accepts that the IGF should have a short meeting, once a year, of two or three days. Should the IGF also have a perpetual virtual meeting online? What sorts of virtual forums should the IGF create to enable partcipation?

    (d) How should the IGF meeting in Greece be structured? Should it be an open agenda or should it have specific topics assigned to specific days and times?

    (e) Everyone agrees that the IGF should focus on best practices, but how do we make the IGF an attractive forum for the people who are designing and implementing these practices so that they will want to participate and share their findings and insights?

    (f) Finally, what do we expect the first IGF in Greece to look like?

Here's a running list of the subjects put on the table by the countries of the world for discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Greece (and beyond). Most of today's discussion focused on organizational and process issues. Because the structure has to serve the subjects under discussion, however, I thought I'd tease out the substantive issues mentioned and list them here:

• spam and multilingualism (EU);
• development, outreach and the transfer of technology from the developed world to the developing world (G77 and China);
  
• Cybersecurity, cybercrime, terrorism, spam, privacy, multilingualism, consumer protection, capacity building, and global public policy related to generic top-level domains (Brazil);
  
• U.S. and Canada statement tabled no specific items for discussion but focused instead on the nature of the forum;
• Freedom of expression, multilingualism, capacity building (UNESCO);
• Digital divide, capacity building only. The IGF should focus on a narrow set of issues that would benefit from worldwide participation (CCBI)
  
• Infrastructure development, reducing technical costs of access, digital divide (Ghana);
• Focused on process issues, but also mentioned digital divide (Ubuntu);
• Digital divide, capacity building, multilingualism, network security, spam (Switzerland);;
• "Significant public policy issues" but nothing specific (Japan);
• Stability and security of the Internet, cybercrime, privacy, multiligualism, cultural and linguistic diversity (Government of Quebec);
• Process issues (ISOC Argentina);
• Capacity building, use of technology to assist developing economies (ISOC);
• Process and organizational issues (Conference of NGOs);
• IGF should be development-oriented, also focus on cybercrime (Argentina);
• "Substantive issues of real significance to users" but nothing specific (Australia);
• Spam, privacy, security (OECD);
• Process and organizational issues (IGTF-Japan);
• Process and organizational issues  (Singapore).;
• Spam (El Salvador);
• Spam, Multilingualism, Capacity Building (Chris Disspain, ccNSO)
  

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."
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       The .COM Registry Agreement and the litigation with Verisign are both on the agenda for ICANN's next Board meeting on 21 February 2006:
I have no idea what's going to happen.
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...."
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

Happy Valentine's Day. Today's show starts with a review of last week's show, then moves to Internet Governance and this week's organizational meeting for the U.N.'s Internet Governance Forum. Finally a question: who represents end-users? Do they represent themselves only in the marketplace or is there a role for them in "governance" and "technical coordination" as well? (iPro Radio 72 | 12 Minutes).

Coming Thursday: Governing the Ungovernable.

This will be an interesting week. I'm headed to Geneva tomorrow to attend the organizational meeting of the U.N.'s Internet Govenance Forum. I'm working on a paper, responsive to this set of questions, that I hope to finish before the meetings start on Thursday. Like the new gTLD paper I sent to ICANN, it's a principles-based approach to Internet Governance. Principles for the Creation of an Internet Governance Forum. It address most of the questions posed and tries to get at those universal truths that underlie the way everyone thinks about Internet governance.

Here's the list of confirmed attendees so far. I wasn't affiliated with any government or NGO or civil society group, so if you look down that list, you'll see that I'm listed as an "expert." Heh. It comes from this language in the meeting notice: "Other participants who can demonstrate proven interest and/or expertise in Internet related issues will also be admitted." If the governments of the world don't defer to my superior expertise, I'll have to show them my name badge.

One of the problems with being an "expert" though is that I have no compatriots. I'm not from the government; I'm not from a certified non-governmental organization; and, I'm not from civil society. I'm afraid I'll be the Admiral James Stockdale of Internet Governance. But here's why I'll be in Geneva: the Internet is my home. It's the same reason property owners go to town council meetings. I'm a citizen, concerned about what my local government and neighbors might do to the place where I live.
I'm not excited about the fact that our government has started shooting lawyers. This will be a good week to get out of the country.
Gillette used its Super Bowl ad to launch a new five-bladed razor, which reminded me of this parody from The Onion two years ago.

Coming Tomorrow: "IPR72: The Internet After the Internet Governance Forum."

I wish I could think faster. If I could, I would have said something at ICANN's meeting two months ago in Vancouver that I'm saying now on this weblog. The central debate in Vancouver was over whether to approve the proposed ICANN-Verisign registry contract, including its controversial "presumptive renewal" provision. The "presumptive renewal" provision is what guarantees Verisign that it will run .COM in perpetuity absent some serious malfeasance on its part. The reason most often repeated in support of "presumptive renewal" was that the provision encourages "investment."

The more I think about it, the less certain I am that this point has any merit at all. It sure sounded good at the time though, and everyone just sort of nodded as if "presumptive renewal = investment" were some inarguable truth. On reflection, however, the argument doesn't withstand even modest scrutiny. The infrastructure and personnel necessary to run .COM or .PRO could just as easily be turned to run .INFO or .CN. If you're in the registry business, you're investing in the infrastructure and personnel necessary to run any number of registration databases. The registry is agnostic about what TLD it serves. Registries don't invest in specific TLD strings, they invest in the infrastructure to serve any TLD string.

All of this has me wondering: how is this different than Boeing and Airbus? If Boeing loses the United contract to Airbus, it simply has to compete harder when American places its next order. If I'm United, I don't see how giving Boeing a perpetual contract with my airline would make it more likely to invest in making quality airplanes. Doesn't quality goes up when you have to compete?

If "presumptive renewal" truly encourages investing, the opposite point is equally true: renewal without competition encourages waste and inefficiency.
I also wish I read more. Here's a piece from Mike Davidson's weblog from March, 2005 titled "How to Snatch an Expiring Domain Name." I wish I had read it a year ago. First hand accounts are the best tutorials. I picked up this name -- the best name in my portfolio, IMHO -- a few years ago from a friend of a friend, in the days when you had to know somebody to catch a dropping name.  Another good place to do some catch-up reading is on Scott Bradner's page on Network World. I only recently became aware that Scott had a regular column, and it's quickly become one of my favorites. I miss the days when I too had a magazine column. Can you tell?
U.S. Ambassador David Gross: "We think ICANN has done a good job."
One of the more interesting aspects of yesterday's podcast, that I didn't fully appreciate while the conversation was taking place, was the emphasis that Elliot and Antony placed on new TLDs with a distinct semantic meaning. Elliot suggested that the Achilles heel of .COM might just be the fact that it no longer stands for anything. I might recharacterize the importance of a "distinct semantic meaning" as the need for a "recognizable identity." When I say this, I'm particularly mindful of the .III top-level domain, on which I worked in 2000. .III has no semantic meaning (on purpose), but will have a recognizable meaning when it's marketed as a TLD for individuals.
Speaking of .III, ICANN Board member Susan Crawford provides us all a nice reminder that transparency is the blogger's best friend. To that end, let me add that the .III team is thinking of getting the band back together again. If we do, I'll have a role in that. If and when we make that commitment, I'll blog it here and make a full disclosure on the ALAC and GNSO Council lists. It's just in the discussion phases now, but I think a significant market still exists for an individual name space. And frankly, for the all the abuse we took in 2000 about 'how do you pronounce it' and 'what does it mean,' I still think .iii rocks. So does .i.
Finally, a request for help. Do you know someone who has built a popular business or high-traffic personal web site based on a domain name in one of the new gTLDs? If so, I'd like to talk to them on an upcoming podcast. I want to hear why they chose a new gTLD instead of a .COM, .NET, .ORG or a ccTLD. I want to hear what challenges they faced in marketing their site.

Coming Monday: "The Birth of the Internet Governance Forum."

What a terrific show. I'm grateful to my three guests who allowed me to bring a combined 25+ years of experience with ICANN to this podcast. The conversation started last week on this weblog when Anthony Van Couvering (Names@Work) posted this comment. Chris Ambler (Image Online Design) followed up with a comment. Then Elliot Noss (Tucows) followed up with a comment of his own. So I brought them together again on this podcast to continue the discussion around one broad theme: how will new registries roll out new gTLDs in a way that will expand the usable name space and bring in new registrants, not just sunrise registrants and speculators? (iPro Radio 71 | 42 Minutes).

Coming Tomorrow: An Investment in Registry Services.

One of the hot topics here in Los Angeles is the MPAA Ratings Board, as seen through the lens of documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt. Their new film, "This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated," shows how costly and illusive family-friendly ratings can be to achieve for independent filmmakers. If you want both sides of the story, extraordinarily well-done, listen to the two most recent episodes of National Public Radio's "The Business" (January 23, 2006 / January 30, 2006). The new documentary tries to make a case that the power of the ratings board exerts a sort of de facto censorship on what content audiences can see. The argument goes something like this: the MPAA controls what ratings are assigned to films; producers and directors contract with the studios to deliver a certain rating in exchange for having their film distributed; films that don't get "PG-13" or "R" ratings don't get made by the big studios; therefore, the MPAA controls what movies the studios make.

To make it more complicated, Dick and Schmidt argue, quite effectively, that the MPAA discriminates when it comes to depictions of sexual situations: screen depictions of same-sex behavior garner a higher-level of parental protection than substantially similar opposite sex depictions. Is that fair? Or is the difference in the ratings just an accurate measure of how 'the average American parent,' the standard by which the MPAA is guided, would judge the behaviour? Content labeling by a third-party is not easy, consistent or necessarily predictive of how you would label something.

From my vantage point, however, I'm not persuaded by the "This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated" argument. First, the opportunities for creating and distributing content, without friction or restriction, have never been greater. This blog entry is proof of that. Equally important is the ability of filmmakers to release their film without any rating at all. The MPAA service is voluntary. As a practical matter, the big budget commercial films we see in theaters all have a rating from the MPAA, but I'm still skeptical. The MPAA requirement comes from the investors, who simply want to ensure that they release a film that can reach wide audiences, i.e. a favorable ROI. Their money, their decision. And, second, if the MPAA ratings seem very red-state oriented in their view of what 'the average American parent' might think, then compete with them. I have no doubt that a more progressive ratings board might get some traction with filmmakers and cinema owners in the blue-states.

If I have any gripe with the MPAA, it's that the ratings (G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17) are too blunt a ratings instrument. I'd rather see the categories of content, such as violence, sex, language and adult themes, rated separately on a scale of 1-10. That would allow me to make better choices about what to allow my children to watch.

Which brings me to .XXX, the bluntest of ratings instruments. Check the web and you'll find lots of people discussing their belief that a new TLD for pornography inevitably will lead to censorship. I have a hard time equating "labeling" with "censorship" even when the effect of the label is that many people will decline to distribute, show or see something. The problem will come if .XXX is made mandatory by the governments of the world and the guidelines for what "must" go in the TLD are unpredictable, discriminatory or impossible to enforce. From a legislative perspective, I think the better view is to make .XXX a "safe harbor": so long as you register in .XXX and serve your content only from a host addressed by that domain, we won't prosecute you for obscenity.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'll bet Louis wishes his memory could be scrubbed as easily as his resume.
IANA Report on the Redelegation of the .TK Top-Level Domain: "At present the domain is delegated to Vixie NZ Ltd (caretaker) with Paul Vixie as the administrative contact. ...Paul Vixie, the current caretaker, agrees to the redelegation."
The Times Online (via Slashdot) reports on rumors that "Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant...." I find the line between creepy and cool is getting more and more fuzzy.
Chris Ambler thinks he owns the Internet. I'll bet he'd settle for just a piece of it.
Finally, here's a quick warning to the men who read my weblog. Gentlemen, this is a trap. Do not fall for it. Those little pink hearts are not real -- they were added in Photoshop. You bring one of these home for Valentine's Day, and you're sleeping on the couch. Trust me on this one.

Coming Tomorrow: "IPR71: What Can We Do About Those Troublesome New gTLDs?"