Wendy Grossman writes:  "Law professor Michael Froomkin and I decided in a moment of madness to drop by ICANN's offices in a spare hour last week when we happened to be in the neighborhood...."

Wish I were there:  Wendy's Blog: Legal Tags: Preventing the Internet Meltdown.

But I'm here.

By the way, kudos to ICANN for getting the real-time transcripts from the Kuala Lumpur meetings posted quickly:  ICANN | Meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 19-23 July 2004.  For those of us following from afar, it makes a real difference.

Later: Ditto the kudos on the reports.

New from Register.com:  IMPORTANT NOTICE. PLEASE NOTE THAT REGISTER.COM HAS MODIFIED ITS SERVICES AGREEMENT. THE REVISED SERVICES AGREEMENT WILL BECOME EFFECTIVE AND BINDING FOR YOUR EXISTING SERVICES 30 DAYS FROM JULY 16, 2004. NEWLY PURCHASED SERVICES ARE IMMEDIATELY SUBJECT TO THE REVISED SERVICES AGREEMENT.  IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY OF THE CHANGES TO THE SERVICES AGREEMENT, YOUR SOLE REMEDY IS TO TRANSFER YOUR SERVICE(S) TO ANOTHER PROVIDER.

New agreement here. Old agreement here. 

Here's a PDF on the .ASIA new gTLD proposal, as presented on the registrars' mailing list. I've reviewed most of the new gTLD proposals and this one continues to strike me as "best in show."

This is from the recent archives, but required reading for the budget discussions: Note From A Concerned Reader. I didn't write it, but I agree with it entirely. What concerns me most about the current budget discussion is how removed it is from the work that went on in 2002-03 to create ICANN 2.0. After months of discussion and vigorous debate, the ICANN community reached a point of general agreement about the sort of organization ICANN should become, how its mission should be defined and limited, and, yes, even the amount of and funding mechanism for its budget. Those discussions seem completely lost on "the Twomey administration." So read this...and remember where ICANN was just last year.

A slideshow presentation in support of .cat.

Vint Cerf:  "ICANN's stewardship is international, bottom-up and multistakeholder. ICANN promotes user choice, predictability and a stable technological environment in which innovation is encouraged."

Ross Rader writes: "I'm utterly stunned."

Keith Teare's Weblog: "The new Google toolbar clearly rips off the RealNames idea. I'm flattered. Shame they didn't give credit, after all I am one of the inventors of this patent."  (via Dave)

tbyfield: "what year is it?"

So if you really had a point you wanted to have the ICANN Board hear and consider in Kuala Lumpur, what would you do? Comment below and/or vote in my new poll (see left margin).