This is a doozy. Look at how the compromise to put over discussion of ICANN until 2005 is being viewed in Africa. Here's the story from AllAfrica.com: "The transference of Internet governance from US corporation ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to the United Nations has been viewed as one of the biggest victories for the developing world. The UN has been given until 2005 to take control of the digital highway." Whoa.

GNSO Request for Comments on "Procedure for use by ICANN in considering requests for consent and related contractual amendments to allow changes in the architecture or operation of a gTLD registry." Now open, through December 28th.

EurActiv.com News: "After an intensive round of negotiations over the weekend, the negotiators were able to reach a compromise over the three outstanding controversial issues, clearing the way for the actual Summit:...(2) internet governance: the question of who should run the internet (the American semi-private body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) or a regulatory body of the UN, as proposed by the developing countries. The controversy was solved by putting the issue on the back burner: the UN will set up a working party which will report back to the 2005 Tunesia Summit;..."

New Use for the DNS: "Under Yahoo's new architecture, a system sending an e-mail message would embed a secure, private key in a message header. The receiving system would check the Internet's Domain Name System for the public key registered to the sending domain."

P.S. If you understand how this would work and have a minute to drop a comment below, I'd be grateful for a technical explanation of the Yahoo! proposal. Thanks!