ICANN finally made a decision to kill the .xxx application, with the Board voting 9-5 against it. In a bad sign for the future, the vote indicated that ICANN's approach to top level domains will be to block any proposed that are politically or culturally controversial.

ICM registry responded by releasing a court decision which ruled that the Departments of Commerce and State failed to justify withholding documents that reflect the U.S. government’s role in meddling with ICANN’s consideration of .xxx, and ordered the government to turn over the documents or fully explain its failure to do so as part of official agency deliberations about the role of the U.S. government in ICANN’s approval of .xxx.

Last May, IGP provided detailed analysis of 88 pages of documents obtained by ICM under the FOIA showing how the U.S. handled the .xxx application up to that point. Even with the major redactions, the documents showed how US supervision of ICANN was influenced by domestic political pressure. They left no room for doubt that the US altered its policy toward ICANN in response to this pressure, and that it actively worked in tandem with ICANN to conceal the nature and significance of US governmental influence over ICANN from the media.

It will not be a surprise if these new documents reveal more behind the scenes pressure by the USG.

Emerald Group Publishing has informed us that Milton Mueller's paper, IP addressing: the next frontier of internet governance debate has been selected as a Highly Commended Winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2007.   more »

I just returned from ICANN’s “gala dinner,” lavish affairs that have become an institutionalized part of its meetings. My perspective on this was best encapsulated by a remark made by John Berryhill, a domain name lawyer, at the Marrakesh, Morocco meeting. As we finished a huge meal and moved on to see dozens of Berber horsemen shooting rifles, setting off fireworks and rustling camels he deadpanned, “Yeah. This is the proper way to run a computer addressing system.”   more »

I am at the Lisbon, Portugal meeting of ICANN. There are about 900 registrants and maybe 400 at the plenary sessions at any one time. A number of interesting things are happening here, although in general this is a calm and relatively routine meeting. Judging from the growing amount of swag you get with registration, ICANN looks prosperous and confident. Items of note include: growing pressures to find an acceptable compromise on Whois policy reforms; a surprise appearance from the Secretary-General of the ITU on Friday; and an announcement this morning from ICANN CEO Paul Twomey that a final decision on the .xxx TLD will be made this week.   more »

During recent testimony to the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the NTIA requested that documents containing advice it received from the Department of Justice during the recent .com contract negotiations between ICANN and VeriSign not be revealed to the public:

Ironically, NTIA made this request on the heels of Sunshine Week, during which the House has passed four measures that promote and preserve open government, including a bill to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.

Why would the public benefit from seeing these documents? At the time of the contracts release, sentiment among registries, registrars and registrants was very negative, citing anti-trust concerns. Eventually, however, the contract was approved. So one has to wonder, if DoJ's review was favorable what's the big deal about putting them in the public record?

Another statement voicing opposition to the efforts by ICANN's Government Advisory Committee to assert censorship authority over new top level domain strings has been released. Written by Michael Palage and Avri Doria, it shows how widespread and deep the concerns have become. Palage is a former ICANN Board member, an intellectual property lawyer and (hold this against him ;-)) inventor of the "sunrise" proposal for protecting trademarks in new top level domains. Doria is a longtime IETF participant, WSIS civil society activist, former member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance, feminist, and definitely not a lawyer. The statement, "Please Keep the Core Neutral," argues that "when the politics of censorship rather than solely technical concerns drive the coordination of “core” Internet resources, it threatens the future security and stability of the Internet. A month ago, IGP led the charge against this provision with an alert on the GAC proposed policy.

Following on its public meeting on net neutrality the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has posted the comments of many participants and (almost exclusively American) commentators. The comments follow the usual ideological divides; many are quite informative and detailed with regard to economic, legal and technical aspects. One comment in particular caught my notice, however. E-commerce provider eBay conceives of net neutrality as a global norm and a potential global governance issue, similar to the way the Internet Governance Project has. This is not a particularly well-argued or strongly substantiated comment, but it's got the basics right:

"The issue is not closed in by borders – innovation without permission should be allowed to thrive everywhere. ... But more and more countries may find it in their interests to fragment the global Internet. Erosion of neutrality will make it easier for that to happen. Why would they want to do this? It could be for censorship reasons; we have seen this happen in China. Or there could be cultural motivations – to promote local content by discriminating against foreign sources.... The policy decisions we make here in the U.S. will have repercussions worldwide."

IGP will be taking this issue into the Internet Governance Forum in Rio.

Just when you thought the .xxx affair couldn’t get any worse, it does. I’m beginning to think that ICANN’s approach to TLD approval was cooked up by a demented sergeant from Abu Ghraib.

On March 13, the ICANN board is set to vote – again – on whether they can approve ICM’s Registry’s application to operate a domain reserved for adult online content: .xxx. This will be the third or fourth time this has happened. I have lost count. The same thing keeps happening again and again. ICANN tells ICM registry, the company applying for the domain, something is wrong with its application and something more needs to be done to get approval. ICM registry dutifully goes off and does what was asked. And then ICANN thinks of something else that is wrong, something else it has to do. It’s Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football, on a global scale and costing millions of dollars in money and time.   more »