Month: August 2002

ICANN has set up a public archive of comments received on the preliminary .org report.

Here’s a short digest of .org coverage in the online press: The Register emphasizes ISOC’s need for sustainable income, and quotes anonymous rival bidders who pointed to criticisms of favoritism. C|Net has a very high-level round-up of the basic facts, opinions, and conspiracy theories. The Washington Post discusses these conspiracy theories (and their rebuttal from Stuart Lynn) in some more detail, and quotes Milton Mueller as saying that ICANN should have simply presented the board with the data from the evaluations. news.com.au discusses this whole thing from a more local point of view, and pays particular attention to Unity Registry’s bid and their experience in migrating an existing registry to EPP, as opposed to building an EPP registry from scratch. Finally, an internetnews.com article mentions doubts about ISOC’s ability to run .org – from a financial point of view: But one source close to the bidding process wonders why ISOC’s own auditor’s had doubts about the company’s financial ability to take over the .org registry, one of the key criteria for selection as registry. “If you look at their bid, it talks about their balances and their liabilities, and says that “these factors and others to the company raise substantial doubt about the Internet Society’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the source said. “If their own auditors are concerned, then why are they getting this recommendation?”

Milton Mueller and Dany Vandromme have taken up the comments on corrupted tables and inconsistent numbers, see the ncdnhc-discuss list’s archive for details of that discussion. A readable version of a lenghty message I just sent to that list is avaiable here. That message includes my suggestion for a more readable presentation of the NCDNHC’s evaluation, inspired by the excellent presentation of the results from the Gartner group.

Finally, Bret is also thinking out loud on .org and asking questions.

You have to wonder how this goes together: The same board and staff who believe that public elections (with significant outreach organized independently of any individual candidates) are not suitable to select the members of the board, are partially relying, in their decision on .org, on a self-selected survey of the worst kind, namely, on the public support for bidders: As far as that part of the evaluation is concerned, my earlier remark that the NCDNHC’s report looks sound was rather premature.

The Advisory Group on an at-large advisory committee has released its report; the report is available from the archives of the atlarge-discuss list: (1), (2). The report will probably be posted quite soon to ICANN’s web site.

ICANN has published a preliminary report on the .org re-delegation. The report suggests that ISOC should run .org in the future.

The CDT‘s Rob Courtney writes on the GA list: This afternoon, CDT transmitted the following letter to Asst. Sec. Nancy Victory and Robin Layton at the Department of Commerce. The letter urges Commerce to commit to adding new provisions to the ICANN MOU, including provisions to create meaningful limits on ICANN’s authorities, establish accountability mechanisms, and provide representation. The letter also urges that the MOU’s duration be short, not to exceed one year, and that ICANN submit bi-annual public reports on its progress to Commerce and the GAC.

The letter is available from CDT’s web site.

An abcNEWS article, titled Can ICANN?, discusses various aspects of ICANN reform, with Michael Froomkin as one of their interview partners. Ross Rader has already commented on Froomkin’s remark that meetings outside the US mean less transparency. What is more interesting (thanks to A.S. for the heads-up!) is the remark on a possible “re-bid” of ICANN’s functions when the MoU expires in September: It isn’t an attractive problem [for Commerce] to fix. Now, dear friends from the American NGO community, where are your contingency plans just in case ICANN should continue to exist? Where’s the blueprint for a consumer interests’ constituency? Quite frankly, I agree with much of the recent criticism against ICANN. But I’m missing contributions from certain groups on ICANN’s actual business.

As C|Net reports on August 9, that is, three days after the FTC investigation against Verisign became public, Verisign [is] playing by the rules. I’m impressed. Interestingly, the C|Net article is about the Annual Independent Neutrality Audit, which was published in late June.

This week-end, there were various indications of growing frustration. One example for that frustration was an exchange between ICANN board member Jonathan Cohen, Michael Froomkin, and ICANN’s external counsel Joe Sims.

Other postings worth your attention: Roberto Gaetano on ICANN funding for the GAC, and on possible reasons for being frustrated with participation in ICANN. A follow-up to the latter one came from Bret Fausett. Writes Fausett: The fact that people have stuck around longer than less sentient animals would have under similar circumstances is a testament to their goodwill, their desire to assist ICANN (not tear it down), and the belief in the importance of ICANN’s mission.