The Washington-insider panel centered on what should be done when the USG-ICANN Joint Project Agreement (JPA) expires in September 2009. Unfortunately, no audio or transcript of the event was made available. Based on other accounts the usual positions were laid out for the audience. NetChoice's industry advocate Steve DelBianco pleaded for trademark interests and religiously played the "takeover by other governments" fear card, Brazilian government official Everton Lucero expressed the mantra of other powerful governments that the U.S. has "inappropriate control of ICANN and the DNS," and ICANN's Paul Levins maintained that ICANN was already an "independent organization" and sought to dispel fears of ICANN gone wild in a post-JPA world.
Only when DelBianco suggested that ICANN's responsibilities could be split in two - with ICANN continuing to regulate gTLDs and some other organization overseeing ccTLDs - did things become revealing. more »
