Bharat Jhunjhunwala in The Statesmen:  "It would be futile to ask the United States to give up its control of the internet. Power is taken, not given. The only way is for the countries like India to be one-up on the US by excelling the US in future developments of the internet."

Or maybe we can just out-source management of ICANN to India.

Eric Brunner-Williams, writing on the registrar list: "Since there isn't a chance in hell that the IPC will ever agree to any limit on their right to run the show, there isn't any point in talking to them." Entire thread here. FWIW, I've never understood the past alliances between the registrars and the IPC; their interests aren't aligned. The IPC has an interest in foisting obligations (and costs) on registrars and controlling the way they conduct their business. As I read the tone of the registrar list the last six months, this has become more and more unpalatable.

A year or so ago, I offered news feeds on ICANN scraped from Google's news feeds. I didn't realize Google takes a dim view of that practice.

From ICANN's Friday Press Release: "Offsite Human Resources Pty, Ltd is engaged to conduct a search for the position of Ombudsman...." (As near as I can tell, Offsite Human Resources Pty, Ltd is an Australia-based search firm.)

A reader writes that I should keep track of all of the posts in the blogosphere on new TLDs and then forward them to ICANN so it can consider them as part of the public forum. Very good idea. Bloggers are writing a lot about the sponsored proposals and the evolution of the namespace, but ICANN is seeing increasingly fewer comments on its public comment boards.

Here's what may be an even better idea though. ICANN (or, rather, Terri Irving), when you announce something that calls for public comment, set the web page to do auto-discovery for remote pings (aka "trackbacks"). Then, I can publish my comments on my own web site, auto-alert ICANN that I've posted something, and ICANN can keep an easy public record of the relevant posts in the blogosphere.  

Terri, drop a note to Ross. I'll bet he can get you the tools you need.

This letter from Ethan Katsh of the University of Massachusetts is must reading. I agree with every word. How long can ICANN's failures continue to be failures of accountability? (To borrow a phrase from Esther Dyson, it's time for ICANN to starting making new mistakes.)

More from Farber's IP list. From Dr. Farber: "[W]hat I and others I talked to heard was endless statements on the need to change the charging for international Internet connections to developing countries; endless calls for additional resources so that delegates from developing counties [could] attend international meetings; complaints about the domination of English on the net (wish I could see that in Japan and Korea when I try to find information) etc. The tone of the meeting seemed to be that international governance was needed and the under current was that ITU would do it."

Scary. I'm hoping others who attended will post their thoughts.

Lauren Weinstein, via Farber's IP List, comments on what he calls Network Solutions' "A Sucker Born Every Minute" Domain Service. I disagree. For certain persons, I can see a real need, and market, for the service. Think of it as insurance. If I have a mission critical domain name for my corporation and don't want the uncertainty and risk of having to renew it periodically, $999 is cheap. If I'm a manager, I've taken something off my worry list for the entire course of my employment; I'll be retired (and dead) before the domain name comes up again for renewal. When I see posts like Mr. Weinstein's, I begin to wonder whether we've become so accustomed to damning Network Solutions at every turn that we do so even when it's not warranted. This is just an optional service, for heaven's sake.

Well, truth be told, just one picture from PC Forum. The rest others are family shots from the trip, including a side trip to Joshua Tree on the way home.

I came back from PC Forum only to find that the next stop on my year's conference schedule, NGN Policy 2004, has been cancelled. I was scheduled to speak as part of a panel on "Regulating the Regulators." That panel may, or may not, be bundled into November's Next Generation Networks conference in Boston. If you were planning to attend April's policy conference in DC, come to the Boston conference in November instead. Details here.

Netsol is now offering 100-year registrations: "Network Solutions' 100 Year Domain Service is perfect for individuals or businesses that place a high value on keeping their domain registration indefinitely, and don’t want to worry about losing their registration because they didn’t open a renewal notice or have their credit card information up-to-date." Individuals? We don't usually live that long. I wonder how Virginia law and the NetSol Terms of Service treat contracts with dead people.

Just posted. ICANN's 6-Month Financial Report for Period Ending 31 December 2003.

Jim Wagner discusses the case for mobile domains on InternetNews.com: "Today, mobile devices merely access the Internet; tomorrow, they're going to be devices that act as Web servers and other repositories of Internet documents.... The way the domain name server (DNS) (define) architecture works for domains like .com and .net are particularly unsuited for mobile devices, [because] it takes up to 48 hours for IP address changes to propagate on the Internet."

Declan McCullagh comments on the proposal for .XXX.

If I'm a manufacturer of mobile devices, say like Nokia et al., do I really need a TLD in ICANN's root? I make the device that accesses the Internet and I control what software is loaded on that device. In other words, I have complete control over how look-ups are done on my mobile devices. I can simply mirror the ICANN root, so that access to legacy TLDs is accomplished accurately, and drop in my own mobile TLD with the extension of my choice. In fact, I don't even need a single digit TLD. In my proprietary root, I can have a zero digit TLD and have all DNS queries without an extension default to my mobile TLD. My consortium of mobile companies all agree to operate and use the mobile root, and the fact that the root is not ICANN's is completely invisible to users. If I want to use the registrar network to market and sell the registrations, I can simply approach them directly. At the end of the day. I've routed around the ICANN approval process and its attendant regulatory beaurocracy while giving my users all the benefits of both roots. As heretical as it sounds, why isn't this a better strategy for the mobile consortium?

Declan McCullagh interviews Vint Cerf about current issues within ICANN.

Brad Templeton: "The domain will not actually be named .mobile, rumours are they are hoping for a coveted one-letter TLD like .m 'to make it easier to type on a mobile phone.'" Sorry folks, we tried that in 2000.

ICANN's response to the .i proposal:  "Sarnoff's application requests a one character TLD - .i. In answer to a question about acceptable lengths for TLDs, ICANN responded prior to the end of the application period in FAQ #47 that ordinarily TLD labels proposed for the new TLD program should be between three and sixty-three characters long, inclusive. The response emphasized that, under the current practice of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, one-letter labels are generally reserved from assignment to allow for future DNS extensibility. Although explicitly acknowledging in its application the reservation of one-letter codes, Sarnoff requested .i. However, Sarnoff said in its application that it would consider adopting an alternative string, such as ".idi", ".iii" or ".one", although Sarnoff believes that such a string would be less distinctive and therefore pose a greater possibility of being confused with a traditional TLD. Sarnoff's claim to have an "untraditional" TLD, however, appears to be significantly overstated; the evaluation team believes that the specific plan of Sarnoff calls for a relatively mainstream personal-use TLD."