ICANN: "ICANN has extended its Public Comment period for all of the new sTLD applications until 23.59 UTC 14 May."

This is a good thing, as most of the comments to date were submitted in the last 48 hours. Now, at least, we can respond to those who would torpedo any progress in the namespace (see below).

Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the ITU to Paul Twomey: "I refer in particular to the application for “.tel” sponsored by Pulver.com, but my comments below are also applicable to any application which could encompass usage of the E.164 numbering plan...[T]he E.164 international public telecommunication numbering plan is a politically significant numbering resource with direct implications of national sovereignty. It is also subject to a multitude of national approaches, regulatory provisions, and, in some cases, multilateral treaty provisions. Thus, any application for a new Internet top level domain name that envisage interfacing with the global telephony addressing system merits careful consideration."

And make no mistake, he means "careful consideration" as in "denial without review because the issue is too big to even start to consider until we have at least four more years of positioning, hand-wringing, and debate...."

New ICANN Staff Opportunity: "The continued expansion of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has created an immediate need for a Customer Relations Manager...."

The punchline is what the job is "officially" called.

Registersite.com's Lawyer to ICANN's Lawyer: "Our clients filed the lawsuit in, and will always exercise, good faith. They will not, however, be intimidated by ICANN's empty threats and bad faith efforts to scare the plaintiff into withdrawal."

From ICANNFocus.org: "For the year ended June 30, 2002, ICANN spent over $1.1 million on the law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue. ICANN's legal bills amounted to almost 20% of their total revenues for the year."

And this is problem? From where I sit, if the world's corporations all spent 20% of their revenue on legal fees, the world would be a much better place. Trust me.

I'll be at the E3 Conference from May 11th through 13th. If you're planning to attend, drop me a note.

ICANN's Lawyer to Registersite.com's Lawyer: "Having reviewed plaintiffs' original and first amended complaints, I write to tell you that ICANN believes that you and your clients have brought this litigation in bad faith, at least as against ICANN...."

A new ICANN Announcement asks for nominations to the ccNSO Council on or before Wednesday, May 19th.

The rules are as follows: "Each [ccNSO] member can nominate up to 3 candidates for election to the ccNSO council and each member can second up to 3 candidates. Each geographic region elects 3 councillors and any ccNSO members in that region can nominate and second candidates. Candidates need be neither resident in the region nor a citizen of a country within the region in which they stand for election."

Did you know you can subscribe to this (or any other Blogware) weblog? A "subscribe" link is in the top menu bar. You'll receive the full text of, and all of the links for, anything I publish here via e-mail as soon as it is posted on the web.

ICANN Announcement: ICANN Issues Call for Transfer Dispute Resolution Service Providers.

And if any potential 'Transfer Dispute Resolution Service Providers' are seeking Transfer arbitrators, this is something I'd like to do.

The Nominating Committee for 2003, on which I was privileged to serve, has released its final report on the work it performed. (The report is here as a PDF.) If you're involved in ICANN, please read this. A thorough critique of the report will provide important guidance for the Nominating Committee of 2004. I'll have more comments on the 100-page report in the coming days.

ICANN Press Release: "The work of the 2004 Nominating Committee begins today when the Chair sends his formal invitation to the ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees to name their Delegates and Liaisons to serve on the Nominating Committee. "

The ICANN Board met yesterday by teleconference, to review the following agenda items:

• ccNSO Bylaws Clarifications
• Independent Review Panel Arrangements
• .pro Registry Agreement Deadline Extension
• Pending Redelegation Requests
• Litigation Update
• MoU Progress Update
• sTLD Application Process Update
• Other business

The resolutions adopted by the Board (on the ccNSO, independent review panels, .pro, .ps, and .ng) are here.

If you live in Canada, read this. Ross Rader writes: "I've accepted the nomination(s) to run for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) board of directors...."

Kieran McCarthy has a new article in The Register that gets to the bottom of the recent .LY outage: Dr Hosni Tayeb and the case of the disappearing Internet.