See below for answers. These are my personal answers. Keith Teare
-----Original Message----- From: Jim Fleming [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 9:38 AM To: Keith Teare Subject: RealNames and ICANN >Were all companies with similar "products" (or services) invited to attend >the ICANN meetings? RealNames were merely one of the contributors to the discussion. Others included IFIK (International Forum for Internet Keywords, which includes CNNIC; TWNIC; Neustar; Netpia and RealNames); CNNIC; John Klensin, and RealNames. I believe other invitations were made but for one reason or another people could not attend. >Who on the ICANN staff was involved in making 2.5 hours available? >Was the ICANN Board informed about your presentation? Andrew McLaughlin made the invitations. This was a session - actually well publicized in advance - officially hosted by ICANN. >Could that 2.5 hours have been used to approve more TLDs? Not for me to answer. But clearly the there is no current process to create more gTLD's. >Why is ICANN involved in matters that have little to do with DNS? The goal - I believe - was to educate a broader spectrum of the community on the naming systems above DNS. The primary utility of this to ICANN is that there is considerable pressure on ICANN to introduce multi-lingual naming into the DNS, although the technical community seems likely to conclude that there is no good way to accomplish this. Higher Level Naming Systems may [in my view do] give a way to relieve this pressure whilst coming up with a solution for Internet users in non-English speaking countries [the vast majority of users]. In my personal opinion it was a much needed and very successful session. It has a lot to do with how we overcome the obvious and well understood [thanks to John Klensin] limits of the DNS. I welcome ICANN's interest and do not see this as any kind of "mission creep". There was no sense of ICANN seeking to be involved in policy making for the layers above DNS> >What is the corporate relationship between RealNames and VeriSign? VeriSign is a 10% shareholder in RealNames and has a board seat. They have been a consistent financial investor and have never interfered in the running of the company, VGRS is a partner and has embedded Keyword sales into the EPP. VeriSign Digital Brand Services is also a partner and sells Keywords. The Web presence group does not yet sell Keywords. That's it.
