Kevin Murphy, on his Texturbation weblog, describes the eNom “long-tail” idea as "arguably what would have been conceived if [Sitefinder] and [the Waiting List Service] had ever had unprotected sex in a hotel room in a developing-world country after an ICANN party. The bastard son of Site Finder." I have to admit, the eNom idea confuses the heck out of me. I need someone to talk me through it ....veeerrrry sloooowly.

And Kevin has the scoop on why Google became a domain name registrar.

To honor the life and work of Liz Dengate-Thrush, InternetNZ has established the Liz Dengate Thrush Internet Entrepreneurship Foundation and seeded it with a substantial gift. A form allows online pledges. Peter is one of my oldest friends in the ICANN community, and my thoughts and prayers are with him, his family, and Liz's many friends at InternetNZ.

GNSO Chair Bruce Tonkin, at the GSNO Council Meeting this morning: "I would like to congratulate Rita [Rodin] on her election to the board." Ms. Rodin, elected by the GNSO, fills the vacancy created by the resignation of Michael Palage. Her bio and background information are here.

From OSOpinion.com: "Groups who despise the US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have organized an email campaign to let the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) know what they think of its continuing effort to privatize coordination and management of Internet Domain Names and DNS."

From the If-The-Incumbent-Monopolist-Can-Have-It, Why-Can't-We? Department, ICANN reports: "Afilias (.INFO), NeuLevel (.BIZ) and PIR (.ORG) have formally requested that proposed renewal registry agreements be posted for public review and comment." 

From Neustar's Open Letter to the ICANN Community: "NeuLevel has been working with ICANN for more than a year to renegotiate the existing .BIZ agreement. As of late last week, we reached final agreement on all points...."

Excellent stuff! It's on now. I'm capturing the Real stream and will try to distribute the audio as a podcast later today.

Vint Cerf, from the transcript of yesterday's Opening Ceremony:

Keiren McCarthy has a story in The Register, and ICANNWatch has a post too. (Pictured: Paul Twomey, Verisign's Leslie Daigle, and Evil Mastermind of Doom Bert plot out their nefarious plans for the next three years.)

Michael Gallagher has joined GoDaddy's Board of Directors.

Statement from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission: "In short, if ICANN restricts the use of Whois data to technical purposes only, it will greatly impair the FTC’s ability to identify Internet malefactors quickly – and ultimately stop perpetrators of fraud, spam, and spyware from infecting consumers’ computers."

If you haven't been to an ICANN meeting in person in the last year or so, you've missed the place where the real action occurs: the Board-Constituency meetings. These are never webcast but always interesting. Here's the MP3 (46 Minutes / 10.6 megabytes) from today's meeting of the Registrars' Constituency and the ICANN Board. (Note: Some of the conversation in the early part of the session was not picked up by the microphone.)

Associated Press, as carried in Business Week Online: "Shares of VeriSign Inc., which sells domain names to Internet registrars, were up Wednesday, as an analyst predicted earnings gains once the company gets regulatory approval to raise prices.....Moskowitz said he expects VeriSign will see only modest earnings gains of 2 cents to 3 cents per share in 2007 from any price increases, as the company may have to notify registrars and wait until second quarter to increase .com prices. But, he said, 'the 2008 impact should be large.' After raising prices for a second consecutive year, VeriSign's revenue from domain name sales could hit $52 million, pushing earnings per share to 11 cents."

In a comment to an item below, Keiren McCarthy points to this delicious gem of a Board resolution, passed unanimously on Wednesday, June 14th:


Too bad it took ICANN less than 48 hours to put the lie to its "strong intention[] to maintain a timely reporting of the Board’s activity," by missing the five business day reporting deadline for the meeting it held on Friday, June 9th.

In other comments below, Veni Markovski spends more of his credibility defending ICANN's late reporting, arguing that posting the report after the end of the fifth business day (a Friday) but before the beginning of the sixth business day (a Monday), constitutes technical compliance with the bylaws. He also suggests that my post characterizing ICANN's late reporting as a bylaws violation is "yellow" journalism.

First the facts and then a comment. Fortunately readers of this weblog and followers of ICANN's activities don't have to take my word, or Veni's, for the proper calculation of time for issuing preliminary reports. The Bylaws are crystal clear: "No later than five (5) business days after each meeting (as calculated by local time at the location of ICANN's principal office), any actions taken by the Board shall be made publicly available in a preliminary report on the Website." It doesn't say "before the beginning of the sixth business day," but "no later than" five business days after each meeting. For the meeting ICANN held on Friday, June 9th, the time clearly passed at the close of business on Friday, June 16th, the fifth full business day after June 9th.

What baffles me is why an ICANN Director would turn his anger on the person reporting the bylaw violation rather than focusing on the person(s) responsible for the late reporting. How much more ridiculous can Staff make the Board look than by flouting one of its resolutions just two days after it was passed? If I were a Board member, I'd direct my substantial concerns at the person(s) responsible, not at the ICANN community member who pointed out the problem.

Gigalaw's Doug Isenberg, in a CNet Op-Ed: "Today, cybersquatters have rebranded themselves as 'domainers.'..." I don't know if that's true, but the converse is certainly not true. The vast majority of "domainers" are not running afoul of the law, and the Isenberg piece does a significant injustice to bulk registrants everywhere by painting them as "cybersquatters" and denigrating the conferences and communities that support their legitimate and lawful interests in domain name catalogs.

Add: From Domain Name Wire, which notes that Isenberg is a WIPO UDRP panelist: "I’d hate to have a UDRP decision fall into his hands if he goes in with this bias...."

Double Add: Isenberg also decries Internet "'monetization' services--which quickly let domain name registrants turn otherwise unused, or parked, Web pages into money via affiliate links that often trade on the goodwill established by well-known brand owners--are finding a large and growing customer base of hungry and often shrewd domain name registrants." Isenberg might want to talk to Vint Cerf about this. His company runs a little service called "Google Ads," which is probably the most popular and effective "monetization" service used by "domainers."

How long until John Berryhill weighs in?

Subimal Bhattacharjee, writing in the Khaleej Times: "The .xxx episode has shown clearly how much political interference can influence professional decisions related to cyberspace today. Despite the truce as agreed upon on the eve of the Tunis meet in November last year, the concerns of US control of the Internet has not gone away from the radar of many nations and it seems that the US will run the Internet as per its best interests. Efforts for Internet governance, which is still not a closed chapter, will have to address the issue of domain name management and the independence of the institution and process."

Tucows' acquisition of Mailbank is interesting on several levels. First, and as a matter of disclosure, I'm a shareholder, so I probably follow the company closer than I follow other players in the industry. Second, I completely understand the value that common surnames and hobbies as domain names have in the Tucows' business plan and the value that those names will have to Tucows' customers.

What surprises me though is that the acquisition seems to signal a certain pessimism about the ability of ICANN to create new gTLDs with equivalent value for consumers. At recent ICANN meetings, Tucows' Elliot Noss has been the biggest and most vocal proponent of new gTLDs, but the Mailbank catalog of domain names has its greatest value in a constricted market. So either Tucows sees the Mailbank acquisition as a "patch" to get the company from now until a time when new personal use, memorable domains are plentiful or it believes that the market for .COM names is sufficiently distinct from the market for new names that one has nothing to do with the other. Or perhaps it doubts that ICANN can or will create an easy, predictable process for the introduction of new gTLDs.

For at least the last year, the ICANN community has complained loudly and frequently about the lack of transparency from the Board. Even the Board has complained about the inability of staff to report on the Board meetings in a timely fashion. ICANN's Chair has publicly promised to be better about reporting ICANN's decisions. ICANN's CEO has publicly promised to be better about reporting ICANN's decisions. Declining to open all of their meetings to the public, they instead adopted a new procedure designed to ensure that timely reports were made to the public. So after all of this, you'd think that ICANN would make it a priority to publish its minutes and preliminary reports in a timely fashion, as it had promised. Right?

You'd be wrong. As of today, Saturday, June 17th, ICANN has not posted any preliminary report from its closed-to-the-public Board meeting held on Friday, June 9th. That's eight regular days -- and more than five business days -- from the date of the meeting. As ever, I'm sure the person(s) responsible for this latest lapse simply need another chance... or at least another administrative assistant.

Take a look at the test redesign of the IANA web site. Very nice! (via ITU Strategy Blog).