And unfortunately you have believed the propaganda knocked out by the US government and repeated with vigour by most US news outlets during the WGIG process. Not that it wasn’t beautifully handled, just that it was completely untrue.

Sadly, the .xxx issue was actually all about freedom.

Kieren

It’s perfectly obvious to anyone that thinks about it for more than 10 seconds that we have to have the Internet in different people’s languages. I only wish I spoke Japanese, Chinese or Arabic so I could make the point more forcefully.

If you want to make it clear to Western English-speakers how significant this is, just tell them they have to visit this great new site – and then read it out in Japanese. And then spell the address out letter by letter.

It is also a conveniently ignored fact whenever there are references to “the biggest websites on the Net” and so on, that five of the top ten websites in the world are Chinese or Japanese.

Kieren

I’ll be loloking forward to your update on this.

One of the strange things about the Net community when it comes to ICANN events is that no one ever bothers to make online comments. Admittedly, it doesn’t help that ICANN has historically ignored all such comments, but it’s become a chicken and egg thing.

Anyway, I’ll see you in a few days, and I’m sure the meeting will go well.

Kieren

Thank you for the favorable mention of the Domain Marketplace workshop that I’ve been asked to moderate in Marrakech. I appreciate that you see what I saw in it, that there is interest on ICANN’s behalf to have some substantive dialog about the marketplace, and I have heard a sincere interest to listen.

I fear that folks will arrive with their positions held closely to the vest like poker hands and express them in that session, and it is only 2.5 to 3 hours in length to cover what we are able to only touch upon with the Domain Roundtable Conference in a three day span.

People are not commenting to the public list; this is where folks have a voice to talk about their positions. For the past three days there has only been one post. Ironically, it says that there should be more public voice, yet nobody is stepping up to the plate.

I am hopeful, because of your large readership and following, that there might be some public comment about the areas being covered inspired by your article.

For those interested in stating a postition, I will be reading the posts to this list in the session (abbreviated where necessary for time’s sake — again, time is short for this session unfortunately). The link to the comments is here, and the place to submit comments is dn-market-comments@icann.org.

-Jothan