At PC Forum, Dave Morgan, CEO of Tacoda, just said: "Most of the content on the Internet is advertising supported." Whoa. Not even close, Dave. Most of the content on the Internet is user supported.

From a March 6, 2006 letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce: "We suggest the DoC separate the technical parameter assignment function (as corrected above) from the other two functions since that is carried out for and at the direction of the IETF. ....We appreciate the DoC's continuing support for the IETF's work and we look forward to establishing a close working relationship with the DoC in this matter."

Bonus reading here. 

The highlight of the first session of PC Forum, for me, was a talk by Barry Schwartz, the author of "The Paradox of Choice" (a copy of the book is in my registration packet, and I'm going to start it tonight). His premise is that too much choice leads to paralysis and dissatisfaction. A corollary is that users make better decisions and are happier with their decisions when they have fewer choices. The presentation and ensuing discussion was actually much richer than that, but that's just a quick summary for my jumping off point: artificially restricting choice presents a similar set of problems. My case in point is "Digital Rights Management." A CD that can't be ripped to an MP3 file feels broken. A television show that can't be recorded on a DVR because of a "broadcast flag" would be broken. These restrictions don't make me feel better. When our expectations about the choices we have are not met, we're disappointed not only with the absence of the choice but also with the crippled product or service we've been given.

Dave Winer says he feels cheated because Steve Gillmor, who pioneered the concept of "the attention economy," isn't speaking at PC Forum. I don't. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to hear Steve speak, but the theme of this year's PC Forum is "Users In Charge." I can see where Steve's sweet spot and Esther's conference theme overlap, but, at least as I see it in the hours just before the conference actually starts, they don't overlap to such a degree that the elephant in the room becomes Gillmor's absence. Perhaps my view of that will change after the conference begins later this afternoon.

Last year, one of the online tools Esther used to facilitate conversations and introductions asked you to name three of your "technology heroes." Dave was on my list. If she asked that question again this year, he'd still be there.

Technorati Tag: pcforum2006

My family is headed down to Carlsbad, California this weekend for Esther Dyson's annual shindig. This has quickly become one of my favorites events of the year. (I'm looking forward to the conference, and my kids are looking forward to Legoland.) The overview materials contain some of Esther's observations about how the Internet changes interactions and institutions. On Page 2 of the materials, one comment jumped out at me:


My wife read this and said, "Hey Bret, Esther's writing about you...." :-)

Sign me,

The Special Liaison of the At Large Advisory Committee to the Generic Names Supporting Organization of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Technorati: pcforum2006

Here's a link to last night's Radio GoDaddy.  (Subscription links here: ) The discussion of the ICANN-Verisign deal starts at 36 minutes, 30 seconds. You'll get a chuckle out of the lead-in voices and music.....

I read and rant through three ICANN documents: the ICANN Special Meeting Voting Transcript, the ICANN Joint Statement from Affirmative Voting Board Members, and the ICANN Separate Statements of Board Members. If you'd like to read along with me at home, get the documents from the ICANN web site and join me back here for 24 minutes of fun. (iPro Radio 74 | 24 Minutes).
edgeio-key: e894e42e78475b6ad3f07e6b5be058ee195664b6

With apologies to Harper's, here's "Fausett's Index" for March, 2006:

Average number of years in office of Board members who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal: 3.6

Average number of years in office of Board members who voted against ICANN-Verisign deal: 1.8

Number of Board members placed on Board by 2005 Nominating Committee who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal: 0

Number of Board members up for reappointment in 2006 who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal: 3

Percentage of Board members with telco backgrounds who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal: 100% (Cerf/MCI; Hultzsch/Deutsche Telekom; Diop/SONATEL)

Percentage of Board members with entrepreneurial backgrounds who voted against the ICANN-Verisign deal: 100% (Ito; Rionge)

Number of Board members from North America who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal: 1 (Cerf)

Number of Board members from Latin America who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal: 3 (Getschko; Pisanty; Scartezini)

Percentage of Board members who voted in favor of ICANN-Verisign deal who also voted against or abstained on .XXX: 33%

Since 2001, number of times ICANN has renegotiated Verisign's .COM Agreement: 2

Since 2001, number of times ICANN has issued an open call for new unsponsored gTLD proposals that might compete with .COM: 0

Here's something that landed in my mailbox this morning from an anonymous reader....

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ICANN’s Fat Tuesday

Last Tuesday (February 28, 20006 – Marde Gras), a majority of ICANN’s Board voted to approve a new .com contract that some estimate will provide total revenues on the order of $3 billion for VeriSign between now and 2012. A portion of those funds will be shared with ICANN, supporting substantial budget increases. Time for ICANN staff and loyalists to party! (A road trip to Wellington, New Zealand is planned).

Some suggest that the Board members who supported the deal will propose an ICANN budget of $50 million. What could this possibly be for? Just a few people did the whole job not so many years ago. There can’t be more than 500 people who regularly participate in the ICANN process. A $50 million budget could be hacked up to give each participant a cool $100,000 per year. Maybe that would be enough to persuade them all to stay home and stop creating complicated regulatory processes and irrelevant reports. But the actual plan may be, instead, to spread money around developing countries, to support local infrastructure and/or travel to ICANN meetings, thereby helping defuse third world efforts to re-locate “internet governance” in an “Internet Governance Forum” affiliated with the UN and/or ITU.

ICANN has systematically ignored Luther-invoking protests, tacked to its corporate door, objecting to its establishment of “everything not permitted is prohibited” regulation and its favoritism towards insiders. The ICANN-VeriSign deal is the ultimate sale of an indulgence by the not-so-catholic-anymore church of Postel. It may be one indulgence too many.

Perhaps rather than continuing to party, ICANN should prepare for a Lenten period to come. Registrars, the group previously most akin to supportive priests in the ICANN religion, are in open revolt. Secular authorities are at least considering the idea of withdrawing support – possibly re-bidding the IANA function (think of German princes protecting protestants?). China is creating its own local root (think Church of England going its own way?). Most country code TLDs have simply refused to be bound by ICANN policies – and ICANN has no option but to go along (a general decline of faith). This most recent indulgence for VeriSign may line ICANN’s coffers but it may also bring down the ICANN religion – or at least dramatically reduce the number of its adherents.

There are two rays of hope. First, one justification for the deal was that new TLDs will create competition that can keep the now-permitted .com price increases in check. This may increase pressure on ICANN to reduce roadblocks to creative uses of the DNS name space – and that could revive the DNS industry and generate a new flock of adherents. Second, ICANN has asked outside experts (the London School of Economics) to review its GNSO structures. Maybe they will see what a joke the current structure is and recommend replacing it with something better. But don’t count on it. The majority of the ICANN Board that supported the .com deal will probably see new TLDs as a way of raising even more money. And the LSE may run screaming from the room, if they ever figure out what’s really going on. Religions only reform from the bottom up – and in this case the worshippers may just stop coming to church.

Marde Gras has always been a time to try out extreme versions of worldly vices. The VeriSign float threw some pretty pearls at the ICANN in crowd. In all likelihood, the hangover will be brutal. It’s past time for ICANN to go on a diet and recall the truly limited nature of its mission. The faith that DNS operation is about service, not ownership, should apply most forcefully at the very top level. Only a collective reaffirmation that “everything not prohibited by a real consensus among affected parties is permitted” can lead the ICANN church back to an appropriate level of humility. It’s time for ICANN to call on its constituencies to worship the original Postel religion together, rather than exploiting its now fragile “ownership” of the root to prevent lawful innovation and inviting those to whom ICANN does make delegations to pay for permission to sin.

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Are you listening to Radio GoDaddy yet? No? You need to add it to your subscription list...right now. The discussion of the ICANN-Verisign deal starts at 7 minutes, 30 seconds. Must listening.

Semi-live! ....it's the ICANN Press Conference to brief the world on the newly announced agreement with Verisign. Thirty-seven minutes of Q&A with ICANN's President Paul Twomey. I didn't hear anything on the call that was "news" -- not surprising if you remember Paul Twomey's famous GAC Communiques -- but it was interesting to hear a real live human voice describe why ICANN made the decision it made. (Press Conference of 1 March 2006 | 37 Minutes | 39 Megabytes).

I'm sorry Kieren McCarthy wasn't there. He's had the best take yet on the deal.

And Bob Parsons adds: "C'mon Vint — Please say it ain't so!"

Did you see that the ICANN Board approved the proposed Verisign settlement and .COM renewal? Of course, you did. Did you know that this means billions of dollars of revenue for Verisign? Of course, you did. Did you know I would spend 13 minutes and 20 seconds talking about it all today? Yup, you probably knew that too. On today's show, ICANN, at the Crossroads, gets run over by Verisign. (iPro Radio 73 | 13 Minutes).

Coming Tomorrow: Weaving It All Together: IDNs, New gTLDs, .COM, and IGF.

It's official: litigation has replaced the policy development process as ICANN's preferred mechanism for resolving disputes.

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.)
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.
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:


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.
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.)
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."

Several things are coming together in the next few months that place ICANN squarely at a crossroads. Will ICANN approve the proposed Verisign agreement? What will the courts say about ICANN's authority over those with which it has contracts? Will ICANN approve a new .XXX top-level domain? What changes will ICANN make in the role of the Government Advisory Committee to appease governments? Will the IGF look to have a role in ICANN oversight? What will happen when ICANN's current Memorandum of Understanding with the United States expires in September, 2006? The questions all revolve around a single axis: is ICANN the right organization for the coordination and regulatory task it has been assigned?

ICANN has spent much of the last two years trying to define itself in opposition to the U.N.'s World Summit on the Information Society, but the existential question about what sort of organization it is, and should be, will be answered by its own Board of Directors as it addresses the issues of what to do about Verisign, .COM renewal, .XXX and IDNs. In the end, ICANN's path forward was never about avoiding the potholes of the UN, the ITU, or even WSIS. It was always about how well ICANN performed its core mission. Perform well, and the threats posed by the other organizations fall away. Every ICANN misstep though has encouraged those who claim they could do the job better. And perhaps they could.

It's probably not too late for ICANN to save itself, but if it can't, a safety net is being quietly tied beneath it.

Here's an absolutely hypothetical, totally made-up, wildly far-fetched scenario worth contemplating....

For all its public statements that ICANN is the right vehicle for managing the DNS, IP address allocation, and protocol parameter assignments, the United States government has many doubts about ICANN's long-term viability. It views the organization as a mistake of the Clinton administration. Privatization was supposed to "lessen the burdens of government," but the ICANN experiment has not done so. Behind the scenes, the U.S. Government is as involved now in dealing with ICANN and the fallout of its controversial decision-making as it would have been had it been more directly and publicly involved. ICANN was the creation of public processes during the period 1997-1999 and has "reformed" itself twice since then (once publicly in 2001-2002 under Stuart Lynn and again quietly in 2005 under Paul Twomey), but it hasn't actually improved. Other governments are unhappy with the status quo. Commercial infrastructure providers are unhappy with the status quo. And Internet users are merely unhappy with the status quo when they're not disgusted by it. Although no one in government will say so publicly, ICANN has been an embarrassment to the United States Department of Commerce. If ICANN's face weren't that of the 'Father of the Internet,' the organization would have been wound up in 2001 during the first "reform" effort.

Against political pressure from the world's governments and in spite of its very public failures, the United States has supported ICANN steadfastly only because the California non-profit corporation is a convenient cover for U.S. control. While recognizing that the Internet is an international asset, the U.S. does not trust the international community to be a careful steward of its infrastructure. Post-9/11, the U.S. will not relinquish control of anything it views as integral to national security. That includes the Internet's root zone. From the U.S. perspective, neither the U.N. qua WSIS-or-IGF nor the ITU is an acceptable successor to ICANN. The U.S. recognizes, however, that ICANN is not the answer either. It also understands that supporting ICANN against perfectly reasonable opposition (with which, in private, it largely agrees) is not a sustainable U.S. position over the long term. So what's the exit plan?

The ICANN exit plan starts with spinning off authority over some of its critical functions to other organizations. The first step in the transition is the removal of all three aspects of the so-called "IANA function" from ICANN. Function No. 1 (protocol parameter assignments) will go to the IETF/ISOC. Function No. 3 (delegation of IP address blocks to regional registries) will go to the newly created Number Resource Organization. Function No. 2 (administrative functions associated with root management) will go to a trusted U.S. contractor who will manage the root zone neutrally, without administrative or political discretion, pursuant to a procedure set out by the U.S. government. This root zone management procedure, still to be defined, would involve input from other governments or governmental organizations. The United States recognizes that ccTLD issues impact issues of national sovereignty, and the new procedure will turn on intergovernmental communications unmediated by a California non-profit corporation.

The new intergovernmental procedure would remove ICANN from the politically sensitive issue of ccTLD management. Discussions about "best practices" or preferred technical standards for ccTLDs -- such as in areas like IDNs and DNSSEC -- would move out of ICANN and into the new Internet Governance Forum.

All of the pieces are now in place to make this transition possible.

After it's over, ICANN will be left holding a bundle of contracts with gTLD registries and registrars; ICANN 4.0 will become one with its Generic Names Supporting Organization. Registries and registrars will no longer have to subsidize a $25,000,000 to $50,000,000 behemoth designed to compete with the likes of the UN and the ITU. ICANN will no longer have to fund the IANA out of gTLD registration fees. The Internet's root zone won't be completely out from under U.S. control, but the governments of the world also won't have to endure the indignity of dealing with a California corporation as though it were an equal player in world politics. Not everyone will go home happy, but nearly everyone will appreciate that the transition marks a monumental step forward.

ICANN 4.0 would be left with hard questions about how to create competition in the gTLD space, but it could address those questions unburdened by the current political firestorm over root control and national sovereignty. In time, ICANN would either prove itself capable of handling its pared mandate or find it's authority to provide guidance on gTLD modifications to the root zone transferred elsewhere.

Okay, I made this fanciful story up out of whole cloth. But always remember: you read it here first. 
If you liked the post above, take a look at Karl Auerbach's two-year old submission to the Workshop on Internet Governance. I think much of what he said should happen will happen.