No Such Weblog

It seems like Richard Henderson didn’t hear the answer to his public forum question about proof-of-concept reports.The answer was: http://www.icann.org/tlds /agreements/info /poc-afilias-082702.pdf.(In other words, these reports are added to the TLD contract overview page.)

To begin with, Carthage was an extremely well-organized ICANN meeting. Participants were picked up by the local organizers at the airport and brought to the hotels with buses; wireless was up as early as Friday in the main meeting area (no Internet access was available in the rooms, though).The social events left room for improvement: It’s important that these give meeting participants enough possibility to network and talk to many others who are also at the conference. Gala diners (and similar fixed-place events) with loud music aren’t very helpful for that purpose.Meeting bags are another topic: They should be light, it should be possible to carry them over the shoulder, and they should be useful for carrying a laptop including its power adapter around.

In Carthage, I posted two blog items from the GNSO Council session in which I participated as the ALAC’s liaison.The first one announced that the Council had kicked off three WHOIS Task Forces; the second “covered” subsequent administrative decisions, and the council’s work on a resolution regarding the sTLD RFP.After the session, I had a discussion with several council members who had issues with this, and found my blogging activities inappropriate for various reasons.There are two main directions from which objections can come. One, blogging should never take priority over participating in the meeting, and it must not distract from focusing on council work. Two, an acting person is taking the journalist’s role and reporting about the council session, which is inherently a conflict of interest; also, the quality of the reporting suffers from the priorities an acting person has to set.With a little bit of distance to the Carthage Council meeting, I believe that the only way for me to take these objections into account is to refrain from blogging Council discussions. In the future, I’ll limit any real-time blogging from GNSO Council sessions to giving a terse account of resolutions adopted, to the extent time and attention permit.Later: I just notice that Amadeu Abril i Abril (who sat next to me on the council) has blogged some thoughts about the same debate.

At the October 15 SECSAC meeting, VeriSign had presented results from a survey of end users in the US, the UK, Germany, and China. According to the VeriSign slides, 61% of users surveyed in Germany preferred SiteFinder somewhat or strongly; 76% in China, 81% in the UK, and 84% in the US.Back on October 15, I asked how many of the respondents to the surveys quoted (which included users from Germany and China) do not speak English, and started wondering what language was used for the survey questions.I’m now hearing that the survey was conducted in English.

ICANN has now published an Excerpt from Draft Version of Staff Manager痴 Issues Report for the Development of a Process for the Introduction of New or Modified Registry Services, consisting of 40 questions regarding the introduction of new registry services. The final issues report is now scheduled for November 7.Some of the questions in this first draft are questions of fact; I’d hope that the final issues report actually gives the answers to these questions. Among the policy questions, it’s particularly interesting that ICANN now starts asking who should provide registry services: The registry, or maybe a different party that has been determined, e.g., by a public bidding process?

Katoh-san leaves board, Hagen Hultzsch joins. Deutsche Telekom. Splendid addition to the board.Convene new board for organizational meeting. Re-elect board, reconfirm officers. Agenda items for new board to complete. Election of new board chairman — proposed by board governance ctee: Cerf. Lyman Chapin moves. Pisanty seconds. Unanimously approved.Second recommendation: Pisanty vice-chairman of board. Cerf moves. Tricia Drakes seconds. Pisanty makes remarks about governance committee. Unanimously adopted. (Cerf does not let Pisanty abstain.)Election of corporate officers. Twomey, Pritz, Jeffreys, Schroeder. Unanimously accepted.Thanks for meeting assistance. Accepted by acclamation.Rememberance of Jon Postel who passed away in October 1998. Place letter from Postel’s family in record. Cerf reads letter.Meeting called to a close.

Redemption Grace Period for .info: No discussion. Palage abstains; all others in favor.GNSO deletes: No discussion. Approved unanimously.GNSO Council seats: GNSO Council has asked for three reps; evolution and reform process had two representatives by the end of this meeting. If no action, GNSO has to name two candidates for council. No discussion. All in favor.RegistryPro, second level registrations: No discussion, approved unanimously.New gTLDs. Lots of whereases that outline what is to be done; no chance to take notes on these. President directed to begin expeditious and targeted development of strategy and policy leading to a streamlined process for the introduction of new TLDs; president directed to seek community input on this strategy; report on new TLD policy should be completed by September 30, 2004; implementation begin before December 31, 2004. Palage abstains; all others in favor. Cerf: Is Palage channeling Karl or Andy? Palage: Conflict of interest.New sTLD RFP: Board was hesitant at last meeting about doing sTLD round at same time with “generic” process. Lots of community input both via e-mail and in Carthage. Board has concluded that it should proceed. Open opportunity to apply in sTLD space; not limited to failed Y2k applicants; not limited to non-profit sponsors. Resolution: Open RFP no later than 15 December 2003; “limited number.” Have not picked number. Want to keep this from being out-of-control landslide. Upon completion of sTLD selection process, agreement reflecting commercial and technical terms shall be negotiated. Selection process and implementation for sTLDs shall be evaluated and results utilized in new gTLD process. Cerf moves; Chapin seconds.Discussion: Even while new TLD process runs, there might be results from it that have implications for sTLD contracts. Reasons for moving forward quickly. Keep in mind protection of registrant. Vote. Palage abstains, all others approve.IDN Committee changes. Close existing IDN committee and President’s IDN Registry Implementation Committee. Continue to participate and provide guidance on community’s work with objective to achieve coordinated implementation of IDN. Brief discussion. Accepted unanimously.Thanks to Masanobu Katoh who leaves the board today. Cerf moves. 17 seconds. “All those in favor please clap.” Katoh: On way back from Berlin meeting, wrote “ICANN is a place of anarchists. It’s a wild west.” Improved tremendously now. Can focus on substantive issues. When running for election in 2000, five key issues: Continue work of ICANN to make it more stable. Promote multilingual communications. Establish local ICANN supporting organizations. Formalize multilingual DNS. Have closed two committees today, but work not yet done. Last issue: Review election system. Three years ago, said ICANN can be 21st ctry model for intl organization dealing with technology and new economy. Bottom-up. Private-sector leadership. Good coordination with government. Don’t be too bureaucratic. Believe in ICANN. Believe ICANN can be that model. Good luck.Palage: Katoh demonstrates what direct at-large voting can put on the board.Proposed process to keep track of IDN restriction tables. Klensin: Original model comes out of work by joint team consisting of jpnic, twnic, cnnic, hknic. Working on languages and scripts which derive from Chinese characters. … Tables designed to be applied by a registry for a language. There might be different tables for the same language, depending on which registry you are using. IDN c’tees have proposed that ICANN ask IANA to create registry of these tables, so they can easily be accessed. Qian: Minor correction: Not HKNIC, but KRNIC. Most difficult variant table is the Chinese. Jointly done by CNNIC, TWNIC, HKNIC, MONIC (?); SGNIC doing some work. Klensin: Apologies, not enough sleep. Magnificant set of jobs done on the Chinese tables. Great harmony with which group managed to work. Hope that smaller, but more overlapping scripts which occur in Western alphabetic languages do not cause great deal more problems and confusion than harmony demonstrated for chinese characters and languages. Twomey: Instructions for staff working on IANA functions will be done by Monday.Katoh: Short report of Conflict of Interest committee. Not proposal for resolution. Discussed current CoI policy. Propose to review policy to include board liaisons. First reminder: Disclosures of potential conflicts by supporting organizations. Disclosure of conflicts that SO Council members might have. Second reminder for board members: Provide annual statement regarding conflict of interest issues. Tricia Drakes: Constructive input, cooperation from the community. Engagement of all sectors. Still work to be done on ccNSO. Deliver. Constructive Input! Chance that Katoh-san’s expectations can be achieved.Roberto Gaetano: Couple of words. Underline two resolultions passed today. Importance of what has been achieved with these — talking about new gTLDs. Strategically progressing in careful analysis of the situation for the expansion of domain name space with study. Recognize need for quick action. Board at the same time showing strategic thought in terms of medium-, long-term strategy, also attention to basic needs and provide quick solution in short term.Meeting adjourned.

Bret Fausett, in his public comment yesterday, politely noted that reasonable people can disagree about the need for new TLDs. That’s certainly true.It’s not ICANN’s task, though, to answer that question. ICANN’s task is to set up a way for market participants to answer that question.

We’re now hearing the summary from the ccTLD meetings.Documents used for these meetings are available online, including Stephan Welzel’s analysis of legal issues regarding the ccNSO set-up. This presentation is particularly interesting to read in the light of the argument structure used in Paul Twomey’s recent letter to the GNSO on new registry services.

At the open microphone, Wolfgang Kleinwächter asks what has happened to the Privacy Committee that was initiated in Montreal. The initiative for the committee had come from Andy Müller-Maguhn at the time, who is now one of its three members.Twomey’s response: The committee has been asked to present a work program, but has not yet done so.