At its public forum Thursday, the ICANN Board indicated its willingness to accept and act in accordance with the findings of an Independent Review Panel that ruled it had treated the .xxx top level domain application unfairly.

In a presentation from its General Counsel, ICANN bowed to justice and issued two important declarations.

1. The Board explicitly recognized that its June 1, 2005 vote on the .xxx top level domain had determined that ICM Registry met the required sponsorshp criteria.

2. The Board explicitly recognized that its reversal of that decision was not consistent with a neutral, objective and fair application of documented policy.

The Board's acceptance of these findings of the Independent Review Panel is a huge relief to anyone concerned about accountability. The decision was praised by many different people in the public forum. Only the online adult service industry - which opposes the domain and is not concerned with the accountability issue - spoke against the decision. The action shows that the Board is respecting its stated process. We have no special inside information but from context and conversations we believe that Board Chair Peter Dengate Thrush should take a lot of the credit for leading the Board and the staff to this good resolution.

What happens now? Unfortunately the picture becomes a lot cloudier. First, the staff will conduct due diligence to ensure that the application is still current, and that no material changes have taken place in ICM Registry that would alter the nature of the application. If so, ICM and ICANN will proceed to contract negotiations. Upon finalizing the draft contract, the Board will then determine whether is it consistent with the GAC's advice. If it is not, the Board will enter into GAC consultation following the relevant provisions of the ICANN bylaws. Based on this GAC consultation, bd will decide whether to approve the final application.

Unfortunately, the discussions in Brussels did not specify exactly which GAC advice they were talking about. GAC advice on the complex of content-regulation issues associated with top level domains and "morality and public order" has been notably inconsistent. In many ways, the GAC itself is more responsible for the injustice and chaos imposed upon the .xxx application than anyone else. The posturing of GAC members around the .xxx issue, especially the stunning turnaround of the US Government in August 2005, raises doubts about whether consistency with GAC advice is a good standard to use as a gateway for resolution of this problem. GAC's insistence on some kind of morality and public order exception for new TLDs - and its recent 180 degree turnaround on the workability of those exceptions - is an example of how the GAC acts. Moreover, a devious Board could use GAC as an excuse to refuse to approve the application, although board chair Thrush openly noted that it is possible for the Board to go against GAC advice, however.

A sound recording of the public forum is available here.