ICANN day2
Well, what happens at ICANN meetings is that you don't get to go outside. This morning we had the opening ceremony — note to self, Brazilian anthem is really something –
Here's the Wikipedia entry on the anthem. How about this: “Brazilian law stipulates that only one stanza must be played in instrumental renditions of the anthem, but both must be sung in vocal performances.” We heard both stanzas. It was just great.
There was an opening report from Paul Twomey — file isn't online yet — and then two panels, one about the President's Strategy Committee recommendations (here), and one with IGF updates. (Useful IHT article here.)
This afternoon two good public discussions — on new gTLDs, and on Whois.
Consensus policy processes can work. And we need to adopt policies that foster competition among registries. On the other hand, to the extent there isn't a consensus in favor of a particular mandatory global policy to be imposed on registries and registrars, having competing “local” rules should be fine. It's not a failure not to have consensus. It just means that there's a diverse world out there.