Hello everyone,
Last week I attended the ICANN Board meeting in
Singapore. After having had a chance to reflect,
here are some comments:
The DNSO.
On Tuesday, I attended the DNSO formation meeting.
The morning started out as usual, with both the BMW
and the Paris draft supporters extolling the virtues
of their respective drafts.
The afternoon session had CENTR once again presenting
a compromise draft, one that most in attendance could
support at some level.
>From my perspective, there was a major shortcoming
in the CENTR proposal. Although there was a General
Assembly that was completely open to anyone who wanted
to participate, it didn't give them a voice on the
names council.
Unfortunately, I soon found out that most people didn't
support giving domain name holders a voice on the names
council. For example, a government official suggested
that since the ICANN membership got to elect half of the
ICANN board, they didn't *need* a voice on the names
council.
In response to these statements, I pointed out that domain
name holders were a small subset of the potential ICANN
membership (i.e. 13,000,000 AOL users vs. 4,000,000 domain
name holders). I also pointed out that White Paper (our
guiding document) specified such a constituency.
Things really got interesting the next day at the open
ICANN Board meeting. What started out as a presentation
of the CENTR compromise proposal, quickly devolved into
an attempt to accept the BMW draft as the basis for the
DNSO. This became clear upon comments made by ICANN Board
member Hans Kraaijenbrink, who upon further questions from
Fay Howard of CENTR, revealed his affiliation to BMW
supporters.
By the end of the day, few knew where the board was
going, and we left the fate of the DNSO in their hands
to be decided in their closed board meeting scheduled for
the next day.
Much to my surprise, the board voted to adopt a DNSO
very much like the CENTR proposal, *with* a non-commercial
domain name constituency. IMHO, this was a major victory
that revealed that this board could make difficult decisions,
and that it could be influenced by public opinion and
scrutiny.
Draft Registrar Guidelines.
My complaints with these guidelines have been widely
published, and were reiterated by myself and others in
Singapore. They can be summarized as:
- Top heavy regulation
- Circumvents existing relationships
- Implies ownership over the entire name space
- Establishes an unbalanced tax on some domain
registrations.
Here, ICANN has tempered some of the most distasteful
aspects of these guidelines, and has reassured the Internet
community that it does *not* intend to be a heavy regulatory
body.
And while few details of these changes were made available,
it would appear that there are still some significant problems
remaining with these guidelines. We'll know more as soon as
the new guidelines are released.
WIPO Report.
In general, WIPO is taking some extreme positions on
the relationships between trademarks and domain names.
Most interesting were complaints from members of WIPO's
own panel of experts. Dr. Froomkin has been widely
quoted as one, and Michael Sondow suggested there
were others.
Coincidentally, after Michael's exchange with the WIPO
presenter, I ran into another member of the WIPO panel of
experts. I asked if other members of the panel felt as Dr.
Froomkin did. To my surprise, this person said that they
had stopped contributing to the process, because their
comments had not been acknowledged or accepted.
This person also said that RFC 3 was not a reflection
of any kind of consensus among the panel, and that it
basically came out of nowhere!
Reconsideration Policy.
My biggest complaint with this policy is that it places
three members of the ICANN Board in a position to review
complaints about the entire ICANN Board. IMHO, there is
nothing inherently reassuring about this process.
Although this resolution passed, I am at least slightly
encouraged that Esther Dyson voted against it because she
"felt it didn't go far enough." I couldn't agree more.
Missing Board Members.
Given the importance and precedent setting nature of this
board meeting, and given that at least one member was able
to attend via telephone, I can't help but wonder why two
members did not participate.
Did they have some extenuating circumstance that prevented
them from getting to a phone? Did they feel like they didn't
know enough to make a decision on these topics? Or were they
afraid to take a position on these controversial topics?
Whatever the reasons, we are entitled to know. I hope the
board minutes are descriptive in this regard.
Board Diversity.
One thing for certain, this board is certainly diverse.
Maybe that's one reason they are fighting so hard to keep
their meetings private.
My hope is, as more of their secrets come out (i.e. Hans'
heavy ties to European telco interests), they will be more
likely to open up their deliberations.
As an aside, I found Hans to be very impressive. And as
much as I am likely to be on the opposite side of most of
his positions, I very much respect the way he was able to
accept the communities desires with regard to the DNSO.
Personal Consulting.
It would be inappropriate for me to complain about Hans'
relationships without publicly acknowledging my own. For
the record, I do marketing and strategy consulting for an
assortment of clients in an assortment of industries.
Some of these engagements are specifically involved in
Internet Governance. NSI has been one among several
clients in this arena.
To date, these engagements have been for analysis and
insight only. And while I have been repeatedly asked
to speak on behalf of certain prospective clients, I
have so far refused to do so. I will publicly indicate
when I am speaking on behalf of a client, should this
situation change in the future.
Summary.
All in all, I'd say the ICANN meeting in Singapore
was mixed. No-one got exactly what they wanted --
probably a good sign.
On the positive side, the ICANN Board made some
difficult decisions with regard to the DNSO. They
also tempered some of their policies with regard to
the Registrar Guidelines (although we don't have the
particulars as of yet).
On the negative side, they still held their meeting
in private, and they adopted a reconsideration policy
that doesn't provide any real independent review.
Work to Do.
Bottom line, we have made some progress, but we
still have much work to do. We have to keep the
public pressure on ICANN to open up, and to keep
their decisions light and in the best interest
of the Internet.
We have to monitor the WIPO and Registrar Guideline
situations. And we must ensure that the decisions
announced in Singapore are properly reflected in
the legal verbiage soon to be released.
Finally, for those so inclined, we must work to
organize the various constituencies as enumerated
by the ICANN Board.
For my part, I am going to suggest that ORSC work
in two areas. First, to join with the existing gTLD
administrators (i.e. .COM, .INT, .MIL, etc.) to form a
gTLD constituency to include *prospective* registries.
Second, to join with the DNRC, ICIIU, DADNO, and anyone
else who would like to help form the non-commercial
domain name holder's constituency.
Respectfully,
Jay Fenello
President, Iperdome, Inc.�
404-943-0524� http://www.iperdome.com
