No Such Weblog

Two pointers into the ALAC’s list archive: A powerpoint file which I produced during some of the structure discussion; Scribe notes by Wendy Seltzer, covering the ALAC’s meeting with some people from the Brazilian Internet community.

Just in time to be too late for any Rio notes, the Notebook is back on the net — I could have done this earlier, but was too lazy and too sloppy to do it. (Let’s see if anyone notices that it’s back now.) Blogging from Rio was Bret’s and Ross’ business.

Rio impressions: Amazingly well-organized meeting (my deepest respect to the local organizers), amazingly beautiful landscape, amazingly bad architecture, the most ugly cathedral I’ve ever seen (ok, Taizé can compete), generally good conference atmosphere (despite humidity and heat). Oh, and don’t try to spend local currency at GIG’s duty-free — they only accept US dollars, and you have no chance to change your Reals back to hard currency once you’re through customs. (Despite the fact that Brazilian coins look like fake Euros nowadays…)

During ALAC’s Sunday meeting, some of the structure discussions were relatively frustrating — still, I’m optimistic that we’ll come up with some pragmatic way of actually getting this entire structure to a point where it’s used by people. If there’s any conclusion which can be drawn from these specific discussions in Rio, then it’s that nobody comes up with additional criteria for “at-large structures”. There were some worries that ALAC may take over the NCUC (we’re working on it ;-), or, more seriously, may compete with the NCUC for the same kinds of organizations. The answer to that one is that we don’t want non-commercial organizations to speak on their own behalf (which is what should happen in the NCUC), but that we want them to speak up on behalf of individual Internet users. On ALAC’s side, we’re certainly hoping for synergies, and are not interested in competing each other into the ground.

On substantial topics, there was some progress on WHOIS, in particular at the GNSO Council meeting, and in the debate of that topic during the public forum. Too bad that Karl Auerbach still doesn’t get it, and turned the board meeting on Thursday into an event which was even more dull this time than what it’s usually like. I escaped elsewhere.

Rio, Monday, 9pm.

Ross Rader is too optimistic about my possible blogging in Rio. Don’t expect much to happen on this site while I’m at the meetings… One place to go may be the good old DNSO GA list — I suspect that I’ll rely more upon e-mail than on blogging this time, and it’s likely that I’ll send any notes to that list.

Oh, and of course, there’s always Bret’s blog. 😉

Doc Searls and David Weinberger have written a must-read piece on What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. I’m almost tempted to submit this to the GNSO’s gTLD committee… (Link stolen from Bret, and yes, I’m trying to blog again.)

You can forget about WHOIS privacy problems, bulk access, and all the like: Today, you get that information for free, from NSI. They just sent me 1.7MB worth of e-mail addresses. Yes, that’s right: I got a message from customernotification@networksolutions.com with the subject “.ORG Domain Name Update” (they are the registrar of record for does-not-exist.org). That message contained about 86,000 e-mail addresses, from R over Z to _. One address per line. Time to do a transfer.

Ross points to another recipient of the message.

Another resolution from the January 20 meeting of the ICANN board: The date of the ICANN meetings in Carthage later this year has been changed from December 1-5 to October 27-31.

During its special meeting on January 20, the board has selected the members of the “interim” at-large advisory committee. The key goal for this committee’s work will be to actually put flesh into the current skeleton of a structure for individual user participation in ICANN.

Stuart Lynn has sent a letter to the IAB asking for technical advice on Verisign’s latest changes to the .com/.net registry. Apparently, this step was taken in response to an e-mail from Paul Hoffman (known from the IETF’s IDN working group) in which Paul points out a number of reasons why Verisign’s latest additions are basically crap. He suggests that ICANN should demand that Verisign “stop giving incorrect answers to any query in .com and .net.” That brings up the real question: What’s an incorrect answer?

That’s not a technical question: Technically, returning these A records is just fine, although it will confuse the hell out of users, and although the system may have been implemented poorly. The technical standards tell Verisign how to “say” something, not what to “say.”

Instead, we are dealing with a contractual question: What records may the registry return in response to queries which don’t correspond to registered domain names?

What makes this one even more interesting is the analogy to .museum’s search service: Go to http://air.museum, for instance, and you’ll be redirected to an index of third level domains. Basically, Verisign is just delivering a poor imitation of this service.

From Martin Schwimmer’s trademark.blog: Registrar Immunized Under CDA Regarding Fictitious Whois Info.