No Such Weblog

The GNSO Council is now discussing the strategic plan. People are unhappy with the way in which the current state of the strategic plan was developed, and don’t believe it’s backed by consensus. The following resolution is accepted with a few abstentions:

The GNSO Council does not currently believe that there is a consensus of the ICANN community in the support of the strategic plan. The Council encourages the development of a consensus-based strategic plan.

The GNSO Council is holding its version of the public forum, which partially takes the role that the DNSO GA should have had back then. So far, the public forum has been rather uneventful, with (remarkably) not a single person stepping up to the opefn microphone to comment on WHOIS.We are now in the middle of reports from the constituency chairs, and Bhavin Turakhia read a statement from the registrar constituency regarding the .net redelegation. They essentially consider the board’s agreement to that contract a breach of trust, and have a list of fundamental aspects that they would like to see revised. There was applause in the room after that statement was read.It will be interesting to see how the interaction between the registrar community and the board plays out in the public forum later this week, as there is little doubt that the .net contract will be the dominating topic there.

Writes Kieran McCarthy: To make myself feel better, I sat in on a bit of a closed session of ICANN’s government advisory committee (GAC) – something they hate and which a German reporter had told me earlier they are very strict about. She was forcibly ejected last time. But with goodwill flowing like sweet honey, even this small pleasure was ruined by everyone being nice to one another. What’s the point in having a closed session is you don’t start dishing the dirt?

The IRC back channel for the ICANN meeting is #icann, on irc.freenode.net.

ICANN comes to Luxembourg next week, and I’ll, of course, attend the conference.Not paying as much attention to ICANN matters as I used to, I looked at the published agenda page for that meeting today, to figure out what sessions will be interesting, what are the topics I should read more about, and generally, what the agenda will be.The experience was both frustrating and enlightening: Actually relying on the public meeting agenda, I don’t find out what the agenda is for the GNSO public forum, for the GNSO Council session, for the Public Forum, or for the Board session. I’m also not informed about the details of ALAC’s open meetings — apparently, there are some, but there’s, once again, no agenda published. (Or, at least, it’s not linked from the meeting page.)As far as the “At-Large European Meeting” on Sunday is concerned, I got an invitation, but no follow-up: I have no idea which organizations are going to be represented. There was no preparatory telephone conference. There were no preparatory discussions of the agenda.One of the very fundamental aspects of holding meaninful open meetings is that those who are going to participate have an idea of the agenda. With this ICANN meeting, they don’t get that idea.(I think I’ll make this comment at the Open Mike part of the Public Forum.)

On the phone with my preferred airlines’ frequent flyer program, complaining about a bunch of missing flights: “If you could please make a copy of your boarding passes and passenger receipts to keep for yourself, and fax us the originals.” — “yes, ma’am”

People all over the place are trying to decipher the U.S. Statement of Principles 06-30-2005, which seems to assert, according to one reading, that the United States Government intends to keep its control over ICANN.I see a number of statements in here: The first principle asserts that the USG intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System. That could be right out of an ICANN statement of priorities, and does not imply any statement of distrust in ICANN. Notably absent from this section (and from others further on) is any mention of how long the USG is going to maintain its role.The second principle — Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD) — is not so much a bold assertion of governmental influence on Internet governance, but much more an assertion of that influence’s limits: On the one hand, the government role is confined to the ccTLD space, on the other hand, it’s confined by the DNS’s stability and security (which is, in turn, ICANN’s job).The third statement is a statement of support to ICANN, with the usual description of ICANN’s role as “technical management.”The fourth and final statement — Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora — is notable for its emphasis on multiple fora, and private sector leadership, as opposed to a single, multi-stakeholder thing that could be installed as the new oversight body.What the statement is lacking is any indication of how long the USG will maintain its historical role and exercise continued oversight.I’m sure that this statement is a direct response to the — so far unpublished — WGIG report. Much of the context we’re missing now will fall in place when that report becomes available.

Over at Crooked Timber, Maria Farrell has a brilliant rant on France’s EU constitution referendum, with an entertaining and extensive flame war on economic policy, EU-US relations, and the (de)merits of the constitution in the comments.A question, though: Has anyone actually read that thing they call a constitution?Being German and living in Luxembourg, hence not entitled to any vote on this beast, I hadn’t even tried (and hadn’t paid that much attention), until last week-end. When I tried, I was disappointed. Human rights, which are by definition universal, come with irritating qualifications added to them — “human rights, in particular those of minorities” here, “human rights, in particular those of children” there. There’s a “right to security” to give the security guys bargaining material against genuine human rights. Elections are a lot of things, but not equal. The preamble isn’t even understandable in either English or German — you have to resort to the French version of the text if you want to understand what’s meant. And there’s, of course, much more on the hundreds of pages.But what is the reason for my disappointment? I expected to read a constitution. Something crisp, with a brilliantly-worded catalogue of human and citizens’ rights, with a separation of powers, with checks and balances, with proper democratic institutions (ok, strike that, I already knew that the new treaty would keep the last word with the Council). Less than 50 pages, please. What I read was an international treaty with some constitution-like elements glued to it, and badly.Would anyone in their right mind give this thing the legitimacy and weight a constitution needs to bear? I’d hope not. Would much of the substance be a good treaty to enter into for the EU’s member states, in particular when compared to the status quo? That might quite well be.

For the first time, the Reglement Interieur of the Luxembourg bar association has been published: These rules used to be a well-kept secret of the kind of fraternity that the bar association was. The publication now is the result of the original rules being struck down in court, and of a law that for the first time ever actually gives the kind of rulemaking authority needed to the bar associations’ councils. Also, the bar is now barred from putting tabs on third parties’ money.While the transparency inflicted on the bar association has without doubt helped to throw out some of the more outrageous rules that were rumored to be contained in the old reglement, it also makes some recent silliness visible.The good news first: Luxembourg lawyers are allowed to set up web sites.The bad news: They musn’t link to non-lawyers, and they also must be vigilant that their sites not be linked to by non-lawyers. (Now, how’s that rule going to be enforced?)If you’re as curious as I am as to how this plays out, updates are going to be here.

One of the nice things about living at the German-Luxembourg border is that you mostly don’t notice when you leave one country and enter another. It’s quite normal to go on a bicycle tour and cross the border multiple times without even stopping.Border control facilities have mostly been shut down, and are being repurposed for more reasonable things. For instance, in Rosport near Echternach, for an art gallery.