Heading to Vancouver

If you're heading to the ICANN Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, I hope to see you there. Depending on timing & internet access, I may try some light blogging from the meeting. Bret Fausett's ICANN blog is an excellent source of information on ICANN, and he frequently posts podcasts and audio from the meetings.

Tunis Document

Under an agreement reached at WSIS in Tunis, there will be a new multi-stakeholder forum next year in Athens, called the Internet Governance Forum. The document is here in Adobe Acrobat.http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.pdf

The domain names InternetGovernanceForum.com and InternetGovernanceForum.org were registered yesterday and are for sale on Sedo.com.

UDRP Turns Six

I failed to post this a few weeks ago, but the UDRP turned six on October 24. The first UDRP decision was World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc. v. Michael Bosman, WIPO Case D99-0001 (Jan. 14, 2000), for the domain name WorldWrestlingFederation.com. The domain name directs visitors to the World Wrestling Entertainment website, WWE.com.

I don't have accurate numbers, but my best guess is that there have been over 16,000 UDRP cases in the past 6 years. Cybersquatting has not gone away either.

WSIS Week

This week the world will be watching Tunisia during the World Summit on the Information Society. InfoToday.com has a summary of what's at stake.

An aggregate of blog postings on WSIS is available here: www.wsisblogs.org

Interview with EU Commissioner Viviane Reding in Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,384561,00.html

"So where are we up to with this internet governance thing?" - The Register

Once again, read the paper from the Internet Governance Project here.

ICANN Board Call Today

Here's the agenda for today's ICANN Board call:

8 November 2005
Special Meeting of the Board
Proposed Agenda

- Consideration of .ASIA sTLD Application
- Review and Consideration of Policy Development Process Results and Public Comments for "Procedure for use by ICANN in considering requests for consent and related contractual amendments to allow changes in the architecture or operation of a gTLD registry"
- Board Governance Committee's Recommendation for the Creation of a new Board Compensation Committee
- Briefing Regarding Certain Fiscal Year 2005-2006 Budget Items
- Authorization to Bind Professional Liability Insurance Proposal
- Redelegation of .GS (South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands)
- Approval of Legal Expenses
- Single Letter 2d Level Domain Name Discussion
- Authorization to Enter into Addendum to Marina del Rey Sublease
- Proposed ICANN Bylaws Changes on Interim ALAC's Certification of At-Large Structures
- Proposed Guidelines for Implementation of IDN's, v.2.0
- Approval of Board of Director's Expenses
- Other Business

Listen to Bret Fausett

Bret Fausett's internet Pro Radio podcast is always informative. In iProRadio #57, Bret discusses the ICANN-Verisign settlement and public participation in ICANN.

http://blog.lextext.com/_attachments/1343613/iProRadio-2005Nov4.mp3

Keep up the good work Bret.

New Internet Governance Project Paper

The Internet Governance Project (http://www.internetgovernance.org) has released another paper in advance of the World Summit on the Information Society. This paper is a must read. Download it in pdf here: http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/Political-Oversight.pdf

"WSIS seems to be foundering on the issue of 'political oversight' of the Internet. IGP issues a new paper that clarifies the issues and provides concrete proposals for moving forward. We explain why WSIS must separate discussion of the role of governments in setting policy for all Internet issues from discussion of the narrower problem of ICANN's oversight. By means of a careful analysis of the contractual instruments used by the U.S. government to supervise ICANN, the paper shows how the problem of U.S. unilateral oversight can be addressed in a way that is both politically feasible and avoids threatening the stability or freedom of the Internet."