If you don't read anything else I link to this year, at least please read this. It's a new piece, published today, by Doc Searls called "Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes." He begins this way: "This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future." And he's right. The dialogue about the future of the Internet started years ago (and Doc talks about that history in his weblog today), but this article may be the Internet's 'shot heard 'round the world.' This dialogue is important.

On which side will you stand?

A quick search on Google or Yahoo! news will pull up scores of articles on the latest WSIS developments. I can't link them all here, but my general reaction to the "news" that (a) root zone control will remain under ICANN's authority and U.S. oversight; and (b) a new forum will be created to talk about other, non-DNS, Internet-related issues...isn't really news at all. Wasn't that always going to be the outcome? Some of the stories talk about who "won" and "lost," who "capitulated" and who "compromised," but I don't see it in those terms at all. Viewed from afar, this outcome has been certain for a very long time. (See related points in this Internetnews.com article).

ICANN Board member-elect Susan Crawford comments that "ICANN needs to strengthen its legitimacy so that it is apparent to the world that ICANN doesn't need oversight from a UN body or any other multi-government institution." I think that's right. The new U.N.-sponsored forum also will have to prove its own legitimacy so it is apparent that it can deal with the even weightier issues it has been given. And if the new forum aspires to oversight, the task of legitimacy is all the more important. If the forum doesn't succeed in making progress on some of the seemingly intractable issues before it, it can't stake a claim as the rightful successor to the U.S. on ICANN oversight.

If things work the way I hope they do, the two organizations can learn from each other, borrow from what the other is doing well, and perhaps even compete for legitimacy. That wouldn't be a bad thing.

I think I'd like to attend the Greek summit next year, even if I'm just an observer. I'm not sure what the summit will be about, what the issues will be, or what I could even add to the dialogue, but I think it's going to be an important meeting. It would be nice to see it first hand.

....we're in big trouble. I tried to register a new domain name today, and my registrar's registration form choked on my .pro e-mail address: "Customer/Account Info: The e-mail address you entered is invalid."

Kenneth Neil Cukier has an opinion piece on ICANN, WSIS and Internet governance in today's International Herald Tribune.

Apologies if you've tried to access the ICANN-Verisign Wiki page and found an empty page. I'm new to Wikis, and I may have moved it by mistake. The correct URL is http://icannwiki.org/index.php/ICANN-VeriSign_Settlement. Participation welcome...and needed.

What's changed in the .COM Agreement? It's taken me two weeks to get through the agreements...and I am a native English speaker and a U.S. lawyer. If I'm still finding new things, I'm sure you are too. Let's pool our resources. Here's a Wiki page on the changes between the 2001 Agreement and the proposed new agreement. Edit it. Add to it. I hope this can form the foundation for the ALAC's public forum presentation on the agreements in Vancouver.

Thanks to Ray King for the ICANNWiki!

Must reading from Foreign Policy: an interview with Professor Lawrence Lessig on ICANN, WSIS and WIPO. Great stuff. Thanks to the reader who sent in the link!

Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal. It begins: "It sounds like a Tom Clancy plot. An anonymous group of international technocrats holds secretive meetings in Geneva. Their cover story: devising a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web. Does it sound too bizarre to be true? Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does. The Internet faces a grave threat. We must defend it...." Link via a reader. Thanks!

Add: The text is also on Dave Farber's list, for non-WSJ subscribers.

I consider Susan a friend. I wanted to write her a note about the Verisign-ICANN deal, but I decided it would be better as an open letter. Comments welcome.

------

Dear Susan,

Congratulations on your appointment to the ICANN Board. Your appointment is proof positive that the ICANN processes work in the interests of the Internet's end users from time to time. Seeing your name on the announcement list made me happy.

You're the right person at exactly the right time for this job, because your first challenge as an ICANN Board Member is an issue you've been thinking and writing about longer than anyone else. The proposed ICANN-Verisign .COM registry agreement reflects a fundamental reconsideration of ICANN's oversight role of registries. I can't think of anyone else better prepared to deal with this issue.

You'll find a lot to like in ICANN's new approach. For starters, the new contract, including its appendices, is 50% shorter. Registries now have a clearer path toward the implementation of new registry-level services. The monthly reporting requirements to ICANN are less burdensome. All of this is good because it signals a move away from "regulation" and toward the use of market forces to influence a registry's decisions.

If ICANN hopes to move from regulation to a market-based approach, however, it hasn't gone far enough. Verisign has been given the freedom to raise prices and implement new services, while at the same time, it has been insulated from any threat of competition. Verisign can operate .COM in perpetuity, commercialize the .COM metadata, and raise prices every year, without the fear that the .COM registry contract will be rebid.

This is where ICANN's negotiating team failed. If Verisign had to face a competitive, equal-opportunity rebid every four years, ICANN would have no need to place any restrictions on price, services, or most other aspects of a registry's operation. ICANN even could lift the price caps completely. If Verisign is insulated from competition, however, lifting price caps and allowing new services is an invitation for monopolistic pricing. In my view, Verisign should have a choice: (a) the status quo of tight-fisted regulation, price caps, and "presumptive renewal," or (b) a wide open, market-based approach where Verisign faced competitive renewal at the end of every contract term. In the new deal though, Verisign gets the best of both. That's a windfall for Verisign but is guaranteed to harm consumers.

In short, ICANN has gifted Verisign with all the benefits of a competitive environment without making it confront the rigors of real competition. (That's the "elevator message.")

You're ICANN's newest Board but you're also the best person on the Board to take the lead on these issues.

Don't be shy; you know the issues better than anyone.

Warm regards,

    Bret

ICANN gets another blogger, Susan Crawford, for its Board of Directors. And glad to see Njeri Rionge reappointed (though, Njeri, you need a weblog :-). This is great news!

(Bios of all the new NomComm appointees are here.)

Today's show covers, what else, the ICANN-Verisign proposal and revisits the ICANN-Netsol proposal from 1999. I also recount and react to a weird conversation with an ICANN Staffer from last week. (I think maybe folks are tense down the road there in Marina del Rey.) (iPro Radio 57 / 11 Minutes). Header Music: "Wearing the Day Down," by Kevin Johnson.

It's going to be terrific. According to ICANN Director Michael Palage, ICANN has deferred .XXX until the public forum, and I expect that the ICANN-Verisign "deal" will take a prominent place on the agenda as well. You don't want to miss this one. Information about the Vancouver meeting is here. The Public Forum will take place on Friday, December 2nd, and Saturday, December 3rd.

No podcast from me today, but here are two mp3 audio segments on topic (ICANN) that are far better than anything I could ever produce: Kenneth Neil Cukier on WSIS and John Perry Barlow on Jon Postel. Both segments are from the October 28, 2005 episode of National Public Radio's On the Media. Great stuff.

Karl Auerbach has his own take on the value of the .COM metadata: "The contract gives Versign the right to develop a real-time data mining feed of a value that can not be easily overestimated.  Verisign, for example, can develop marketing data about the effectiveness of URL's in TV advertisements during sports games while the game is still in progress.  The data mining ability now granted to Verisign by ICANN will allow Verisign to recognize almost instantly 'what's hot and what's not'.  Advertisers and marketers are willing to pay big bucks for this kind of information.  It's not only a potential gold mine for Verisign but it's also a large step in the transformation of the internet into nothing but a giant advertisement and internet users into nothing but consumers. But wait, there's more!...."

For even more on this, I talk about the same contract provision in IPR55 (yesterday's podcast).

Has ICANN outlived its usefulness? It's a question worth asking when ICANN stops reflecting the interests of the Internet community. I go back to first principles, review an apt passage from The Heathrow Declaration, and wonder where do we go from here? (iPro Radio 56 / 10 Minutes). Header Music: "Hey Judy" by Charlie Chesterman.

So here's a question that's been on my mind lately: did ICANN negotiate the terms of the .NET RFP and the evaluation criteria with Verisign at the same time that it negotiated the settlement of the litigation and the wholesale revision of the .COM registry agreement?