No Such Weblog

A visibly moved Vint Cerf read a resolution in memoriam Peter de Blanc. Elisabeth Porteneuve read an address on behalf of the ccTLD managers’ community, in which Peter’s achievements for the Internet Community were recalled. The board resolution was subsequently adopted unanimously. Those attending the meeting then expressed the community’s deep respect for Peter by a minute of silence.

Jonathan Cohen just seems to indicate that the next meetings after Shanghai are going to happen in South America, and Africa. However, the number of meetings in 2004 is still open, and the meetings’ structure will be reviewed and revised.

Update: Bret apparently had a better audio feed than I during that part. You better read his notes.

The motion was read by Vint; Stuart asked for special acknowledgement of the work done by Andrew McLaughlin (and some other individual), who were not mentioned (Stuart was). Resolution accepted unanimously.

Two more resolutions: There’s a $6,000 reimbursement to .org applicants, and an Executive Search Committee to find Stuart’s successor is formed.

In the budget, the heading had to be changed from “2001-2002” to “2002-2003” (in order to avoid informing the SEC about substantial changes to past bookkeeping, as Vint put it jokingly). No changes to RGP. WLS: Andy introduced an amendmend to condition WLS approval on implementation on RGP. Stuart opposed, since this would concern the board’s action, instead of the proposal’s implementation. The amendmend was voted down. Schink wanted the PSO to check for open standards, so no competitive distortions among registrars occur; satisfied by a note in the minutes. The resolution was accepted (Andy abstaining).

Someone sent me a copy of the resolutions, and agreed that I could publish these with the changes made incorporated. Well, the discussion is going too fast to do the latter thing (in particular when you’d have to work through the discussion so far). Thus, I point you to Alexander’s notes from the meeting which give some rough description of the changes. The resolutions: Vote on reconsideration requests from Russ Smith and Tony So; MoU with .MW; Evolution and Reform.

I’m sorry for the late update – real life took priority this afternoon. Alexander sent in some brief notes during the Public Forum, which are now in the Bucharest Protocols archive: 1. A joint statement was made by four of the DNSO’s constituencies (business, ISP, IPC, ccTLDs) on ICANN reform. 2. Becky Burr made a proposal about “unjustifiable objections”. This sounds very much like this IcannWatch story authored by Burr, Johnson, and Crawford. Bret Fausett made this comment at about the same time. 3. Chuck Gomes proposed some changes to the WLS proposal. Most notably, the preferential treatment for SnapNames customers is apparently supposed to go away.

Those of you who understand German may wish to read Monika Ermert’s article on the GAC communiqué. (The communiqué’s text is not available online!) You may also give Google’s translation of the article a try.

For some more comments on what else has been going on during the afternoon part of the forum, please visit today’s Bucharest.BLOG.

Elisabeth Porteneuve broke the sad news on the Names Council list: It is with great sorrow that I write to inform you that our colleague and friend of several years, Peter de Blanc, .VI (US Virgin Islands Registry), passed away yesterday morning, 26 June 2002, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Peter brought his resources and energy, smile and wisedom, to the ccTLD Constituency, Names Council and ICANN. Our condoleances go out to his family and close friends.

German-language Internet news ticker Heise.DE has an article on the dot-org re-delegation, with the nice headline Die dot.org-Orgie.

Some of the GAC discussion following the reading of the communiqué was actually quite interesting. You could, for instance, watch a contribution from James Love (including shouting at Vint and Alejandro [or was it Amadeu?]), and Esther Dyson “disassociating” herself from this kind of behaviour. James tried to ask for a public input channel into the GAC’s discussions (Twomey seemed to refer him to individual governments’ outreach processes, if I understood him correctly). Esther asked about whether an at-large approach had been considered by the GAC. I didn’t understand all of the answer, and from Esther’s follow-up question, it wasn’t too clear to those in the room, it seems. Marilyn Cade then tried several times to get a clear statement on “private sector leadership” out of Twomey, who wasn’t overly clear once again.