Below are links to the audio, in MP3 format, from yesterday's NTIA hearing. I've broken the audio roughly by the same segments set forth in the NTIA's agenda.

Panel 1. (1 Hour / 24 Megabytes / http://blog.lextext.com/ntia_7_26_06-Part1.mp3) includes presentations from Ray Plzak (ARIN), Emily Taylor (Nominet), Lynn St. Amour (ISOC), Suzanne Woolf (ISC), Marc Sachs (SRI), and Tim Ruiz (Go Daddy) on the subject "Are the MOU principles relevant and the tasks completed?"

Panel 2. (1 Hour, 17 Minutes / 32 Megabytes / http://blog.lextext.com/ntia_7_26_06-Part2.mp3) includes presentations from David Maher (PIR); Michael Heltzer (International Trademark Association); David Fares (USCIB); David McGuire (CDT), and Bill Graham (Canadian Government) on the subject "Do stakeholders believe ICANN is fully sustainable?"

Wrap-Up. The program concludes with closing remarks by ICANN President Paul Twomey (15 Minutes / 6 Megabytes / http://blog.lextext.com/ntia_7_26_06-Part3.mp3).

The audio was stripped from the NTIA's Real Video program, which remains archived on the NTIA website.

Oh well. I had decided to follow the NTIA conference, but the Real stream is unwatchable from my office. It's not merely hard to follow....it's impossible to follow. The stream drops every few seconds, often permanently, necessitating a manual reconnect. I know that a stream has many points of failure, but I controlled for my side by asking everyone in the office to shut down their Internet apps except for emergency use. Still unwatchable. So I'm heading over to Dodger Stadium. Can someone archive this?

P.S. If you can't handle basic remote participation, how can you claim any moral authority to oversee the DNS and IP address allocation?

The Real stream is now live...and rebuffering every 15 seconds. Miserable. Let's hope someone archives this so the thousands of us who are trying to watch can do so without interruption. Maybe the Department of Commerce could make it available as a bittorrent.

As I mentioned in a podcast once upon a time, it's been light blogging since February....for the Little League Baseball season. I'm the President -- just call me "Mr. Commissioner" -- of Little League Baseball in Glendale, California, so the last few months have been hectic. The last game of the seaons was last night. Which means all of my excess time and energy are now directed back to blogging.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I have tickets to the Dodgers game at 12:10 pm on Wednesday, July 26th. This means I have a choice to make. Go to the Dodgers game (something I'm passionate about) or watch the NTIA hearing on ICANN (something else I'm passionate about)? Who wins? Stay tuned.

GoDaddy has launched a new "parking"-revenue plan for domain name registrants with modest to small portfolios.

If you're at all interested in serving ICANN in an "official" position, you have two more weeks, until 1 August 2006, to submit your statement of interest to ICANN's Nominating Committee.

Prospectus, issued on July 17, 2006: "This is the initial public offering of The Go Daddy Group, Inc. Class A common stock....."

I get awfully frustrated with ICANN from time to time. At my most exasperated, I even think that government oversight of the DNS and IP address allocation might be preferable to this private-sector led experiment in self-governance called ICANN. Fortunately, we have people like Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to pull me back from the ledge.

Most ICANNers have suspected for years that Free2Innovate's "SForrest" was actually a paid PR blogger retained by Verisign. Kevin Muphy is the first to make this public, with this post on his weblog.

Kevin details how he came to know that blogger-for-hire Bill Hobbs ("I am self-employed and work in media relations and also consult with large corporations on the use of weblogs as public relations tools.") is actually Steve Forrest.  I found out via a different means. If you knock around a little bit in the archives of Free2Innovate, sooner or later you'll hit the home directory and float over to Bill Hobbs' website. The two web sites are controlled by the same person (or at least they were last year when I checked). So call this post a "second source" for Kevin's outing of "sforrest."

The real reason you know that "sforrest" isn't a real person, however, is because he says things that no real person could believe. I'll post more about this during the coming week, as the ICANN blog takes a closer look at the way Verisign's blogger has tried to shape public opinion of his apparent client.

A domain name that I've never used with an e-mail address that I've only published in whois brought this e-mail message today:

July 11, 2006

 

To

Mr. Bret Fausett

------------

Glendale, California

 

Dear Mr. Bret Fausett

 

                                                           

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 I should share the following important information with you.

 

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A 'thinking' site is a site that achieves all of the above objectives with 'No' clicks, instead of a few clicks. When we design websites for our customers, we create and dedicate a small portion of the viewing area to continuously do 'marketing' of our customer's products/services, and deliver powerful messages nicely.  This way, the risk of a website viewer not getting our customer's message becomes negligible. Here is an example of a good thinking and marketing site that we did for one of our clients recently:

  http://www.dupreemediationgroup.---/, http://www.lovinlifeparty.---

Quality:  Also, please take a look at our impressive portfolio at http://www.dreamzinc.net/ where you will see a number of examples.

 

 

Send an email to me at tony@dreamzinc.net with your contact information and the best time to call, and I will call you.

 

Mr. Bret Fausett , I thank you very much for taking the time to read this important email. I sincerely appreciate it, and would love to have your association. I sincerely hope that I have not wasted your time.  If you choose to not respond to this email, I will conclude that you are not interested in our services, and I assure you that you will not get another email from me.  In that case, please accept my sincere and profuse apology for taking your time.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

 

Yours Truly,

Tony Wilson.

http://www.dreamzinc.net

Email: mailto:tony@dreamzinc.net

 

Essence of compassion: Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and wrong... because sometimes in our lives we will have been all of these.

 

Note: Unless you respond favorably, you will not receive any more emails from us.  Guaranteed. 

Has anyone seen Willie Black lately? I knew he had stepped down from Nominet, but I still never expected to see this.