I read with interest the recent blog written by Theresa Swinehart a Sr. Advisor to the President on Strategy. She wrote: "The most critical element of this [ICANN Transition] process is trust and alignment. To ensure success on this accountability track, we must as a community work closely together to make sure that the final process is meaningful. There is plenty of work to be done in an ambitious period of time." more
Fundamental & imperative story behind this enablement of a meaningful string as IDN ccTLD name script in local language is very interesting. Previously there was a limitation of two letters as abbreviation for the IDN ccTLD name script and it is I, who proposed and convinced ICANN to remove this limitations that enabled all countries and territories of the world (who use non-Latin base script of their official language) to apply for a meaningful abbreviation or full name of the country as IDN ccTLD. more
When he wanted to show the transformative and unifying power of the Internet to open this week's ICANN meeting in Seoul, ICANN President Rod Beckstrom had an ace in the hole: Korean guitarist Jay (Jeong-hyun Lim), who became a global YouTube sensation with his hard-rocking version of Pachelbel's Canon. As I watched Jay wail on his gold-plated guitar to standing ovations, I couldn't help but think of Rod waxing that the Internet was a "symphony" of ideas and voices from around the world. more
It has now been about eight months since I joined the Internet Society as the Director of Deployment & Operationalization and I still get asked on a fairly regular basis "what do you do?" Well, with ISOC's Chief Internet Technology Officer Leslie Daigle's recent departure, and with my time here having exceeded both my first 120 days and my first 6 months, this seems like the right moment to reflect on my brief tenure here so far and perhaps pontificate a bit on where we're going - and why. more
China has shut down or 'dealt with' thousands of websites for sharing 'harmful' erotic or obscene content since April, the state's office for combating pornography and illegal publications announced on Thursday. more
If an important debate of our age is going on right now but you don't know where, no one can blame you. Part of the intrigue surrounding discussion of how the Internet will be governed is deliberate; the current process and forums were conceived by parties who want to make sure that if their agenda fails in one place that they can claw back ground in another. Part of that plan is the byzantine "commitology" of the UN system, which is now frighteningly relevant to the broadband industry and civil society. What follows is an effort to make this clear what, where, when, and how it all will happen in 2011. more
The longer I have been in the tech industry, the more I have come to appreciate the hidden complexity and subtlety of its past. A book that caught my attention is 'Open Standards and the Digital Age' by Prof Andrew Russell of Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. This important work shines a fresh light on the process that resulted in today's Internet. For me, it places the standard 'triumphant' narrative of the rise of TCP/IP into a more nuanced context. more
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has shifted its campaign against ICANN's new gTLD program to YouTube with a video from its President accusing the organization of "lying" about having reached a consensus over its plans, reports Kieren McCarthy at .Nxt. "The video ends with a dramatic statement, clearly devised to produce stories such as this one: 'So we'd like to say to ICANN: your claim for consensus it wrong, it is false, it is a lie." more
At the Government Roundtable meeting in Amsterdam on 12 September RIPE NCC presented on her results on auditing Local Internet Registries (LIRs) and on the policy process concerning certification of her members. If this showed something to the world it is that cooperation with governments and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) pays off and self-governance can work. How did this come about? more
Contributing to international telecommunications standards, not in the IETF but in a more august and imposing body, the ITU-T, part of the United Nations, was quite an experience. Still called CCITT in those days, it was formal and solemn; everybody was part of and sat with their national delegation, countries were aligned in alphabetical order; nobody spoke out of turn, every word was simultaneously translated in the three official languages of the time and we wore suit and tie. more
ICANN Chairman and other departures after the board's vote to approve the New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) in Singapore draw criticism, reports The Washington Post. Shortly after the vote, Peter Dengate Thrush joined a New gTLD Group which stands to greatly benefit directly from this vote on the program he led on for nearly 3 years. This appears to have caused grave damage to ICANN's credibility internationally drawing international Press and Governments criticism over conflict of interest. more
Every four years, the 168-year-old, Geneva-based treaty organization that provides the legal basis for worldwide network communications, radio spectrum management, and satellite placements holds a "plenipotentiary" conference among its 193 sovereign nation members. The next plenipotentiary begins on 29 October for three weeks. In addition to potentially altering treaty provisions and resolutions, and constituting its Council as an interim governing body, it elects 17 individuals to its five permanent bodies... more
Love them or hate them, auctions are an unavoidable reality of the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) Program. By their very nature, they create winners and losers. All that is in doubt is where the money goes -- to the losing parties under a private auction model or to ICANN under their auction of last resort. There are pros and cons for both models. But what if there was another way? more
After reading Steve Delbianco's recent CircleID article entitled The Tale of Two Governance Models I was torn. On one hand I agreed and supported Steve's comments about the strength of the bottom-up consensus driven model upon which ICANN was originally founded. As I am about to begin my thirty fifth ICANN regional meeting over the last eleven years, it is a model which I still believe in and fiercely fight to defend. However, on the other hand I look back over the last eleven years... more
At his first meeting as CEO of ICANN, Fadi Chehade showed up ready to work AND to listen. ICANN's new CEO described his objectives for the organization which included 1) affirmation of purpose, 2) operational excellence, 3) internationalization, and 4) evolution of the multi-stakeholder model on which ICANN is built. He also described significant organizational changes to ICANN leadership and staff... more
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