No Such Weblog

Here’s an unofficial agenda of the ICANN meetings next week-end, including the DNSO and ALOC sessions.

The Evolution and Reform Committee has posted a Fourth Supplemental Implementation Report, including proposed revisions to the transition article and proposed revisions to the new bylaws. The changes look like they address a number of concerns raised in the past, so this is good news.

The bad news is that this report is about fine-tuning in a number of areas — there are (almost) no news on the future ccTLD and address supporting organizations in this report or the proposed changes.

Reports from the DNSO’s WHOIS and Transfers task forces have been posted over the week-end. The comment period for both reports ends on December 8.

It seems like Joop Teernstra has, in his wisdom, decided that two distinct global at-large organizing efforts (with almost identical names) are the best thing to do. Now, what was that “control” debate about, again?

ICANN’s General Counsel has published an analysis of GNR’s request for a revised .name WHOIS system: “In view of the above analysis, I recommend that the Board approve the amendment to the Registry Agreement as requested by GNR.”

This call for volunteers to serve on the Interim At-Large Advisory Committee is being circulated on various mailing lists. Volunteers are, in particular, needed for the non-European regions.

I have prepared summaries of the comments the WHOIS task force has received on the issues of accuracy of WHOIS data (warning: long!), and on bulk access, marketing, resale. The comments on accuracy in particular lead to the identification of a number of concerns with existing policy. I have tried to summarize some of these in a separate document.

I begin to understand why it took ICANN so long in the past to produce the transcripts of its physical meetings. I just had a look at the “dirty” transcript of a WHOIS conference call. “Bark access” (as opposed to bulk access) was just one of the lesser evils introduced by a notetaker who was obviously not familiar with the technical terms and abbreviations used by the task force members. Transcripts of some things I said were just incomprehensible to myself without looking at the notes I was using during the call. [Note that I’m not blaming anyone (except possibly myself for talking too quickly).]

In ICANN’s current registry and sponsorship contracts, the names of TLDs are reserved as SLDs. This practice may be intended to help avoid confusion (and to address an old security problem documented in RFC 1535). Additionally, names like dnso.museum or icann.aero are reserved. While these specific ones certainly have some merit, it seems like a gross exaggeration to hard-wire them into a sponsorship agreement.

Conclusion: The reservations may be one of those ICANN practices which should be subject to re-evaluation.

Dave Winer and Bret Fausett are both talking about .blog as one response to Stuart Lynn’s new gTLD action plan. Quite frankly, it’s the first new gTLD idea which immediately appears to be useful to me – provided that the eventual proponents don’t give in to the temptation of tying it to any specific technology or application service provider. Please keep the intelligence as closely at the edges as possible. Keep away from expensive centralized services.

While we are on it, here are some policy issues a proposal may have to address – possibly with some new thinking, since .blog would be a TLD mostly dedicated to (even non-commercial) free speech: (1) How do you handle trademark protection and name reservations? ICANN.blog should, as a name, be available – just like, say, mcdonalds.blog. (2) Is the traditional WHOIS policy appropriate? Of course, there’s much more to think about. In particular: What (or who) qualifies for a regisration under .blog?