Archive for February, 2008

The best part of today, for me, came in the evening when I went to a meeting of the New Delhi chapter of the Internet Society. They had just formed – just three months ago – and they were full of ambition and enthusiasm. They were also having a lot of fun, burbling around and making jokes about each other. They are adopting schools for the blind, getting them equipment and training, and doing it very quickly. They’re trying to find members from all walks of life. They think they’ll be able to influence policy in India. It was a joy to meet them.

Also at that meeting were representatives from ISOC chapters in Bulgaria, South Africa, Australia, Congo, France, and Italy.

I was there to introduce OneWebDay to them (thanks, ISOC, for the opportunity). If the New Delhi chapter can develop a school program in two days, there is *no telling* what they’ll be able to do by September 22.

The rest of the ICANN day was taken up with many meetings of various kinds. Some actual consumer protection officials talked to me. They had seen an ICANN meeting before, but they were still a bit baffled: what does this thing do? Why can’t it be more centralized and authoritative? Ah, that’s the ICANN story.

It’s already Wednesday morning here — 10.5 hour difference with DC/NY/Connecticut.

Tuesday was Constituency Day.  I spent the morning with the gTLD registries, the afternoon with the Board and the Government Advisory Committee, and the evening with everybody at the gala dinner put on by our hosts.

There are so many imponderables at this meeting.  There is discussion about a post-MoU (most recent version is called the “Joint Project Agreement”) ICANN, as that agreement will expire unless renewed in September 2009. That agreement runs between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce, and is the source of ICANN’s contractual authority to make agreements with domain name registries and registrars.

There is discussion about non-ASCII versions of ccTLDs.  But the reason we call these things “ccTLDs” is that they are “country codes” based on the ISO 3166-1 list.  What is the principle behind expanding beyond this list yet calling these things ccTLDs (which implies a different relationship with ICANN than the generic TLDs have)?  And how would a “fast track” for issuing these new things work?

And there’s discussion about new gTLDs, and I am always interested in making sure ICANN is facilitating the entry of new domains – but several of the recommendations for policy choices to be made in issuing them seem to me, personally, to be unworkable.  What’s the principled basis on which ICANN can draw international lines based on morality/sedition/community boundaries?

Sorry for all the acronyms – I would do more explaining, but the connectivity here is not enough to allow for finding other sites to link to in this post.

I can report that the food is wonderful.

This will be brief, because connectivity has been tricky in the main meeting hall and I’m running out of battery.  Petty technical difficulties.  The report for Monday is that ICANN Chair Peter Dengate-Thrush ran a lively session on the Joint Project Agreement (the latest MoU) between ICANN and the Department of Commerce this morning – as Bertrand de la Chapelle says, there are three questions:

1.  is the JPA ending as of Sept. 2009?

2.  what will ICANN look like afterwards?

3.  what process do we follow to get there?

A lot of imponderables.  Now we’re in an open public forum about the Internet Governance Forum, of which the next meeting will be in Delhi (also) in December 2008.  Here the key questions are:

1. will the IGF be a place for action as well as discussion?

2.  what other issues should IGF be discussing?

dying battery.  More later.

I’m on my way later this morning to the next ICANN meeting.  See you on the other side next week.

Google Trends, that addictive site, shows that the key queries today are all about the primaries.

1. super tuesday results

2. election results

3. super tuesday exit polls

etc.

We’re all in need of a little help, it seems:

20.  where do i vote

22.  voting locations

26.  vote online

38.  where can i vote

72.  where am i registered to vote

and

87.  who should i vote for 

The obsessed-about news is the MSN bid for Yahoo! today.  Jeff Jarvis is pointing out that Yahoo! was just an old-media company anyway – so its purchase by an old-technology company is a two-dinosaur tango.  A deal for feeding advertising to the masses.

I want to say something about the pre-old media Yahoo!. There was a time, before Terry Semel came on board, that Yahoo! was in the lead with human-created search results.   The company seemed to care a lot about the quality of the window on the Web that it provided – it was centralized, sure, but it was innovative, provided a gazillion free services, and cared about good design.  It wasn’t slow-moving or Hollywood-oriented.  It was a fine, fun, energetic place, full of talented people.  It’s still full of talented people.  So, yes, the company apparently missed a few boats and didn’t have a strong business model, but it had a lot of good ideas that shaped the internet mindset – free, friendly, human, colorful, irreverent.