ICANN Tuesday
This is Constituency Day. The members of the ICANN Board roam around going to meetings. Right now I’m in the meeting between the Governmental Advisory Committee and the ICANN Board. It’s a big, echoing room with a huge horseshoe seating arrangement and many many microphones. Government representatives speak slowly and calmly - they have lots of time.
Earlier today I spent a long time with the generic top-level-domain registries group (after breakfast with the cross-constituency group, made up of ISPs, IP interests, and business interests).
It’s a long day, and it’s only about half done.
The big issues are really thorny this time - approving “recommendations” for new gTLDs, when there are still lots of details to be understood about how they will be implemented; approving a “fast track” for new internationalized domain names associated with ISO-3166, when there are still even more details to be thought through; and approving improvements to the GNSO in the midst of furious lobbying efforts. The question presented to the Board is, in all three cases, whether to approve “recommendations” that then will be “implemented” later. But, particularly when it comes to the “fast track” and new gTLDs, the details of implementation matter a great deal, and those details won’t be final when the Board is asked to say yes or no. What’s “policy” and what’s “implementation” seems to be a pretty grey area.
And the lobbying - it’s fierce. Lots of threats of various kinds. (Not personal, so far at least.)