by kierenmccarthy on January 31, 2011
Background: At a meeting in December, the ICANN Board and GAC agreed to a special session to be held in February that would be dedicated to trying to find a way to deal with GAC concerns over the new gTLD process and the dot-xxx application. The GAC has been preparing documents for the meeting – and so too, it is believed, have been the ICANN staff.
The details of the United States government submission – which is the most crucial submission due to its relationship with ICANN and its dominant position in the GAC – emerged late last week. They have caused somewhat of an outcry particularly because it suggests that any GAC member would be in a position to veto any gTLD application – which would clearly make ICANN’s processes sub-ordinate to governments. Since the whole point of ICANN is to provide for a multi-stakeholder decision-making process, it is no surprise that this request has got people’s backs up.
There are other suggestions that will almost certainly infuriate other arms of ICANN, some of which go directly against others’ policy decisions, as well as a Board resolution, so there is now a big question over how successful the GAC-Board meeting will be, given the size of the gap to be bridged in just two days.
Anyway, a fuller analysis later but in the meantime below is the full text of what is believed to be the final submission from the US government to the GAC:
[click to continue…]
by kierenmccarthy on June 24, 2010
I’ll be honest: I didn’t go to many Wednesday sessions at ICANN Brussels. At least not physically. The remote participation tools mean that, unless you want to actually raise a point at the microphone, you can settle yourself down somewhere more comfortable and follow events on your laptop (and even your iPhone with the Adobe Connect app).
No need to cram into a room, or ask 10 people to stand up so you can squeeze past them. You can instead pick a more comfortable chair, next to a table, get a nice cup of coffee or maybe a beer or glass of wine and follow events online. The majority of ICANN meetings rarely heat up so you’re not missing much by not being in the room.
I’m not the only one to have realized this. Which explains entirely and absolutely why the 1,000-seater main room had an audience of roughly two for the GNSO Council meeting.
When it comes to bums on seats, the GNSO Council beats only the ICANN Ombudsman in turnout and yet, year-on-year they insist on being in the main room, leaving popular events (DNSSEC this time) to be forced into smaller rooms.
Why? Well the Council claims that it needs the full stage to hold all its members (conveniently ignoring the fact that it actually doesn’t, and they could use the GAC room for one). The real reason is habit and a grand sense of self-importance.
[click to continue…]
