At its recent meeting in Brussels, the ICANN Board resolved that it would publish the briefing materials that are supplied to it in order to make decisions.

This decision was widely seen by those familiar with ICANN as an effort by the Board to pre-empt what would be a recommendation from the independent review team that is looking at the organization’s accountability and transparency (the ATRT). The failure of ICANN to publish any of the material supplied to it by staff has been a bone of contention for a number of years and a large number of people had highlighted the issue to the ATRT in public sessions.

ICANN’s staff this week published, in two parts, 318 pages of Board briefing materials for its meeting in Brussels [Part one | Part two]. Two things immediately struck me when going through the material: one, large proportions of the material released was already publicly available; and two, huge chunks of the documents were redacted. How much exactly? Well, I endeavoured to find out:

Publicly available

The first thing you will notice is that 190 of the 318 pages – or 60 percent – comprise material that is already publicly available. Examples are: preliminary minutes from previous Board meetings; published documents such as summary/analyses; and materials that have been either formally sent or received from ICANN itself – such as letters.

What does this tell us?

Well, first is that if the two documents represent *all* the material that the ICANN Board is being supplied with in order to make decisions, then the Board is being poorly served.

On the topics under discussion at the June Board meeting there are a multitude of other documents that could and arguable should have been provided by the staff in order to assist the Board in making a decision. The only documents that are supplied are internal to the organization, with the partial exception of the declaration of ICANN’s Independent Review Panel, which was a formal report provided at the end of a formal ICANN process.

There are no materials that provide broader context or external view. No third-party reviews or magazine clippings or even reviews of discussions external to ICANN staff reports. This is a dangerous and introverted approach.

In terms of making the Board materials transparent and accountable from the reader perspective – you and me – the huge amount of publicly available material is an unnecessary distraction. It would be far more useful for this information to be referred to using a URL or added to an appendix. Or a separate file.

Redacted redacted redacted

This is the most troublesome part of the materials. The Board resolution directed staff to “publish the non-confidential portions of the Board briefing materials”. At the time, many wondered what would be considered confidential and what would be seen as non-confidential.

The answer would appear to be: 21 percent, or 68 pages of material. This is an excessively high percentage and on a par with military releases of information – clearly something that gets to the heart of ICANN’s accountability and transparency since ICANN is most definitely not in need of as much secrecy as the military.

ICANN staff and Board have not provided a definition of what constitutes “confidential” nor have they provided explanatory notes about the extensive redaction, nor is there an apparent process for questioning the decisions behind redacted material.

There is a long history of processes and procedures, particularly in the United States, for the release and publication of materials. ICANN’s approach would fail to meet any of these. Most troublesome in this set of documents is the complete removal of advice to the Board about the dot-xxx issue, and the blacking out of an independent report into the issue of chairman remuneration.

With no procedures, accepted rules, or external overview of the redaction process, it is a certainty that anything even mildly concerning will be removed – which would appear to be the case here when even a simple timeline has been blacked out in its entirety.

Cover sheets and actual information

It is telling that there are the same number of cover sheets provided as new material: 30 pages each.

Of the new information, and of the 316 pages in total, 13 pages contain material that is intended to guide Board action, and the remaining 17 pages are provided to the Board for information only. In two of the three main documents where “actionable” material in provided, the documents contain parts that are redacted.

So, of the 30 pages (or 9 percent) that contain new information, what are the subjects covered?

• A President’s Report: A summary of what the CEO has been doing and a general overview of ICANN works, with parts redacted. This report might be useful but due to the long delay in releasing the report (it covers events from April and it is now August), it has little or no value beyond an archive.
• IRP review: The controversial dot-xxx situation, where ICANN’s independent review panel decided against the organization and said it had broken its own bylaws in denying dot-xxx back in 2005. The IRP/Dot-xxx issue is heavily redacted to the point that you are able to make out that the staff provided the Board with papers concerning the issue but unable to ascertain very little beyond the background of the issue.
• Chairman compensation: This covers the proposal that the ICANN chairman be compensated at $75,000 a year. Again though it is redacted in all parts that go beyond basic background. The Board has already approved the measure so you have to question the decision to not release any information that went into the resolution, even after the resolution has passed. As such the material that is provided is of little or no value.

The good news

There is, however, some good news. Of the remainder pages that offer new material are three documents from ICANN’s policy department concerning: GNSO improvements; a GNSO constituency charter; and a Geographic Regions report.

These documents are the staff reports that help summarise the work done by the community and give an overview of how things are progressing to the Board.

It is extremely helpful to see these documents being published, particularly when policy documents have in the past proved controversial, with some parties claiming they have been purposefully misrepresented in documents provided in secret to the Board.

None of the documents in this case are particularly controversial so it may have been easier to publish them in full without having to fight the urge to redact portions. Nonetheless, ICANN’s policy department deserves credit for making its documents readily accessible, even if they are contained within two very large PDFs.

Conclusion

If I were grading ICANN’s effort to provide additional accountability and transparency, it would get a B-minus.

There is nothing in these documents that is not readily known already. There is a huge amount of redacted material and no effort to explain that process or even a suggestion that a process along the lines of other information-release programs is being looked into. The documents were released with no indication or notice. They are large files. And they are available from download on a single page that is four pages deep into the ICANN website.

What’s more, if these documents do in fact represent all the material provided to the Board in order for it to make decisions, it demonstrates a dangerously introverted approach in which staff summary documents carry far too much weight. The documents overall appear to be poorly structured – different reports are simply laid on top of one another – no doubt making it harder to Board members to keep abreast of changes and developments.

In conclusion, the release will do little or nothing to assuage concerns about ICANN’s accountability, and will again point to the fact that the extensive provision of (largely irrelevant) documents does not equate to transparency.

The Accountability and Transparency Review Team would do well to look at this self-created effort on the part of ICANN’s staff to be more accountable and review how it differs from what external reviewers would have implemented. Understanding this accountability gap may prove far more useful in really understanding how to improve the organization.

More information:

• Board minutes page
• Part one of review materials for June meeting [pdf]
• Part two [pdf]

ICANN is currently being reviewed by an independent Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT). Their meetings are open, but I have only been stumbling on them by accident.

A closer look at the ATRT’s webpage reveals at the very bottom of the page a PDF that contains details of their future meetings. Not exactly the most accessible way of following the team’s work.

So, to help out, I have created a Google Calendar of the events and have pasted it below.

• HTML version
• ICAL version
• XML version

Earlier this year, the organization that oversees the domain name system, ICANN, saw the first use of its Independent Review Process – its highest level of review for decisions that affect billions.

The IRP decided conclusively against ICANN. The issue was whether the organization had been right to deny the application for dot-xxx as a new Internet extension: the Review Panel said it was not. Earlier today, the Board announced that it would accept the Review Panel’s findings and set in place a multi-stage process of approval before the extension – intended purely for adult content – is added to the Internet’s “root”.

In doing so, the Board accepted two of the five conclusions of the Review Panel. First, that the company behind dot-xxx, ICM Registry, had met the required sponsorship criteria for its application; and second that the finding it had not meet the criteria “was not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy”.

Earlier it had also accepted the first conclusion that the Review Panel drew: that the Panel’s declaration was advisory and did not constitute a binding arbitral award.

But what of the other two?

These two were crucial in that they were nothing to do with the dot-xxx case but were instead about the independent review process itself i.e. deciding the method by which the organization would be held accountable in future.

ICANN’s staff had argued strenuously against both conclusions, and lost. When it came to the actual Board resolutions however, no comment was made on one, and the CEO made a specific statement against the second. The two conclusions themselves make the organization *more* accountable and so by ignoring one and arguing against the second, the Board has actively worked to reduce its accountability – presumably so that it’s not put in the position where it has no choice but to override a previous decision.

This is very worrying and unfortunately realises many people’s fears: that ICANN is paying lip service to the idea of accountability and is not actually prepared to be accountable unless it is put under significant legal pressure (ICM Registry has expressed its willingness to go to the courts if it was not dealt with fairly.)

So what are these two clauses?

First, that the “actions and decisions of the ICANN Board are not entitled to deference whether by application of the ‘business judgment’ rule or otherwise; they are to be appraised not deferentially but objectively.”

And secondly, that ICANN “operate in conformity with relevant general principles of law (such as good faith) as well as relevant principles of international law, applicable international conventions, and the law of the State of California.”

What does this mean in reality? It means that ICANN will argue at any future reviews that the panellists should assume the Board is right and then see if the evidence proves otherwise (as opposed to approaching the whole issue with an open mind), and it means that it will push for any future reviews to use a limited category of law, rather than be held to broader legal standards.

Why is this bad? Several reasons:

1. It means that anyone who uses ICANN’s IRP process in future will have to argue on points of law, rather than just the merits of the case. This means it will be longer, and more expensive and so people are less likely to use it.

2. ICANN is actively fighting against a decision that would make it more accountable i.e. it is showing disdain toward those seeking to make it more accountable, even through its own processes

3. It demonstrates that the organization has an intrinsic bias against accountability of its own decisions – something that was also demonstrated by the CEO in his opening speech in Brussels when he discounted the results of an Accountability and Transparency Review Team before they had even started work.

The fact that the issue was about dot-xxx – something that some people are uncomfortable with – is irrelevant. This process was about whether ICANN was willing to show that it does not believe itself above the law. And, despite giving begrudging approval to dot-xxx, it has demonstrated that it is not.

Update: In the closing ICANN press conference, chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said of the two missing clauses that the Board hadn’t addressed them, as it has been focussing in the applicant (i.e. .xxx) aspect of the declaration. There is also no timeline to address it, he said, since there are no people applying through IRP at the moment, and there has only been one, so not a priority.

As flagged up yesterday, the ICANN Board has approved the dot-xxx Internet extension at its Board meeting just now in Brussels.

It did so almost unanimously (two abstentions) but rather grumpily, however, with several members saying they were “uncomfortable” with the decision and appearing the blame the “process” for forcing them to make a decision. The approving resolutions also stuck in several approval steps, which more members grumpily pointed to.

The resolutions – and a statement attached to the vote by the CEO – also purposefully stepped away from ICANN accepting recommendations by the independent panel review that will make it less likely that the Board will be told it has done the wrong thing in future.

This is slightly sad – the Board had a great opportunity to be big-hearted and to demonstrate that it does indeed believe that it should be held accountable and that it is not as arrogant as it sometimes comes across – but they blew it. And used the difficult nature of dot-xxx as cover.

The domain name system’s overseeing body, ICANN, will approve the controversial Internet extension dot-xxx, designed for online pornography, at its Board meeting tomorrow.

The pre-announcement came in an extraordinary statement read out at the start of the public forum at ICANN’s meeting in Brussels by the organization’s general counsel, John Jeffrey.

The statement said that the Board accepted the results of an independent review panel that the Board had made the wrong decision back in 2007 when it denied the application.

But then it went further to say it would approve dot-xxx, would enter into contract negotiations, and then refer that contract to the Governmental Advisory Committee to make sure they were happy with its contents, since they had raised concerns in the past.

The news caught the community by surprise, just as it was due to make its views known to the Board, but has so far been warmly welcomed by the community.

The decision should finally bring an end to five years of argument over dot-xxx that has threatened several times to descent into a lawsuit. Dot-xxx was originally just one of a number of “sponsored” top-level domain, and went through the usual evaluation steps, almost becoming a reality in 2005.

But then all hell broke loose. An adult industry organization in the United States, the Free Speech Coalition decided it wasn’t happy with the application, and then Christian groups also in the United States got on the bandwagon and used their honed lobbying skills to get all the way up to the White House and Bush administration. Public comment periods run by ICANN were swamped with comments, most complaining about pornography, and public forums were filled with conflict.

Amid a huge amount of lobbying, pressure and hushed conversation, the ICANN Board then decided to deny the dot-xxx application on the grounds that it hadn’t met its sponsorship requirement.

Needless to say, the dot-xxx applicant, ICM Registry, wasn’t very happy about the decision and filed an appeal through ICANN’s Independent Review Process. Two years later, the review panel stated quite clearly that the Board had made the wrong decision.

It was very unclear what the Board would actually do with that external criticism, especially when first the CEO and then the ICANN staff publicly pointed to options that would allow them to effective ignore the review panel’s conclusions.

But the statement made a day before the Board meeting where dot-xxx will now be approved appears to have put an end to what has been a damaging saga for the organization.

Of course ICM Registry and ICANN staff still need to thrash out a contract (it is already in its fourth iteration), and then Governmental Advisory Committee will have to give its consent, or at least not object to it. But at the moment these seem to be small hurdles (although I have to say I still don’t think there is any need to actually go to the GAC).

The really good news is, oddly enough, not that dot-xxx will be approved – it is, after all, just a top-level domain and there will be 500 of them coming next year. The good news is that ICANN’s Board has demonstrated clearly and precisely that it is willing to be held accountable and willing to overturn its own decisions when told it got them wrong. This is good news for the whole Internet.

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.

Yes, the Council is a crucial decision maker in ICANN, but I can’t recall any time in recent years where they have made a decision that was at all interesting. As soon as the gTLD process moved out of policy and into implementation, all the GNSO has done is approve working groups and talk about itself.

Here’s the schedule from the meeting:

Item 1: Administrative matters [leaping out the gate]
Item 2: Prioritization of GNSO work [talking about how hard they work]
Item 3: GNSO Affirmation of Commitments Drafting Team Endorsement Process [I dread to think what this means]
Item 4: Whois Studies [10 years of indecision and still going strong]
Item 5: GNSO Improvements [please shoot me now]
Item 6: Reports from Working Groups [ah! Some real work tacked onto the end of the session]

I’m not knocking the GNSO Council [yes you are – Ed], it does what it does, but please stop putting it in a huge room every meeting so we can all see just how little anyone but the GNSO Council and its obsessive followers care about its this meeting.

Toilet question

Is it just me or is there *always* a cleaning lady in the gents toilets at the back of the main hall. I think she lives in one of the cubicles.

Status quo stalemate

I also didn’t attend the vertical integration meeting, either physically or remotely. There were two good reasons for this.

1. It was at lunchtime – in fact it ran all the way through lunch, and
2. It’s painful to watch people pretend to be listening to the other side

The real name for “vertical integration” is, of course “status quo protection”, and I’m not talking about security for jean-wearing, three-chord musicians here.

The issue has all the making of a Whois clusterfunk: a powerful incumbent element has nothing to lose and everything to gain by stalling the process for as long as possible.

Here’s the issue in a nutshell:

• Ten years ago, ICANN split up the running of an Internet extension with selling domains on that extension
• It did this in order to bring in competition between a very small number of Internet extensions. And it worked
• A decade later, ICANN is going to shortly introduce hundreds of new extensions, and the current system looks decidedly out of date
• A lot of people (for example companies that want to have their name as a top-level domain, like dot-canon) can’t see any logical reason why they should have to pay a third party to register a domain under their own extension
• The biggest players in the separate markets (registry and registrar) have the most to lose from a changing of the roles, and so they are undermining any effort to change the rules
• The Board doesn’t want to force through changes without community consensus because then the most powerful and richest companies within ICANN may sue them
• Community consensus is impossible when a segment of the community has a lot of lose by allowing any change

And so we are going to see endless meeting with people with gritted-teeth pretend to take each others views seriously while at the same time trying to figure out how to screw the other side.

Whois has gone on 10 years. This one can’t possibly last as long because it has such clear competition implications. But that doesn’t mean I want to sit through the excruciating discussions that lead to the end point.

Security – but at a price

Some good news – dot-org went live with DNSSEC. This is a crucial security add-on for the DNS and it is a big first step on a big registry.

Dot-org’s CEO Alexa Raad called it a “tipping point” and hopefully it is. But the reality at the moment is still that it is a very costly and difficult exercise to install DNSSEC. Alexa admitted as much.

Everyone agrees that it will get easier and cheaper over time to make DNSSEC a reality, and there’s little reason for doubting it. But for something that has taken 10 years to become a reality, you can’t help but feel that there is a quiet desperation to keep the DNSSEC momentum rolling.

What if, by the time new gTLDs finally come on stream the ease and cost savings don’t appear – is ICANN really going to lumber applicants with an extra $100,000 or so in costs?

Hopefully it will all go smoothly and DNSSEC will just be something written into the new infrastructure as it rolls out. But despite the good news yesterday, it’s still far from certain.

Gala

There was some consternation at the limited number of tickets to the Gala event. The hosts had gone for the sit-down meal option, which unfortunately means you have to limit it. Anyone that has ever organized a wedding will know why.

And it did have a bit of a wedding feel to it – beautiful location, big marquee, pub band on stage with a little dancefloor, lots of drunk friends and “family”.

It was actually good fun. The place was a stunningly beautiful old building complete with moat, gatehouse, grounds and so on. We were met by people dressed up in traditional dress, treated to people wandering round on stilts and blowing horns.

The only thing missing was a bride and groom – although two dancing partners caused some amusement: the NTIA’s Fiona Alexander dancing with VeriSign’s Pat Kane; and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom tripping the light-fantastic with EU commissioner Neelie Kroes.

The organizers took the very dangerous decision to bus people to and from the event (about 20 minutes away and far away from taxi ranks and so on) – something that has caused all sorts of grumpiness in the past. But, as far as I have heard, the logistics came good. Brussels is shaping up to be a useful, well-organized and, dare we say it, even enjoyable experience.

Engerland Engerland Engerland

Talking of enjoyable experiences, both England and the United States won their World Cup matches yesterday afternoon, putting them through to the next round where they will face Germany and Ghana respectively.

As a British football supporter, I know when to take your enjoyment, so god bless the English team who played well and dominated the game. Fortunately the ICANN meeting will be over when England faces Germany on Sunday.

Dot-xxx

And tomorrow, we will finally get stuck into the issue that everyone has been discussing in the corridors but not raising in the meeting: dot-xxx.

The public forum has an hour blocked out for the controversial TLD, and the Board meeting on Friday is likely to be remembered only for how they decide what to do with it. It should prove interesting viewing.

This Friday, it looks as though the ICANN Board will follow the clear conclusions drawn by its independent review and approve dot-xxx.

Given the importance of the first use of the review process, the importance of the Board being seen to be accountable and the fact that the community was pretty unanimous in recent public comment, it is pretty much the only reasonable course of action.

The question then is: how do things move forward? The company behind dot-xxx, ICM Registry, has published what it thinks is the best approach, but in both pieces of work put before the Board by ICANN staff, has been the suggestion that the Board would need to go back to the GAC before making dot-xxx a reality.

The question is: why? Unfortunately, neither paper makes it particularly clear. As far as I can determine, not only is there no need to go back to the GAC over dot-xxx but it also unlikely to serve any real purpose, and it may even put the GAC into a difficult position where it effectively approves a controversial top-level domain.

So what is the logic for why the Board needs to talk to a specific advisory committee before it makes a decision on its own independent review process?

According to the staff’s logic, this specific ICANN bylaw (Article XI, 2.1j) is the reason.

It says that when it comes to public policy issues, ICANN needs to take into account any GAC advice, and if the Board decides to do something that does not follow any advice the GAC has provided, it needs to explain why.

Here’s what I don’t understand though:

• The Board has already taken into account GAC advice
• The independent review has also already taken into account GAC advice
• Approving dot-xxx doesn’t break any of that advice

What’s more, it’s very unlikely that the GAC will have any other advice to give. It’s also easy to forget that the GAC has never said: don’t approve dot-xxx. Yes, it has said it wants the Board to explain why it approved the application, and yes it has pointed out that some of its members were opposed to dot-xxx but there’s a world of difference between the GAC expressing concerns and the ICANN Board effectively deferring to the GAC following a full ICANN process and an independent review.

Of course you as a reader probably have no recollection of what the GAC has *actually* said, so here is a rundown:

In November 2005, in Vancouver, the GAC said [pdf] that it was glad to have additional time to review the Evaluation Report for dot-xxx. (And that was it.)

In March 2006, in Wellington, it said [pdf] it wanted an explanation from the Board explaining its decision to approve dot-xxx, and it noted that the public interest benefits that ICM Registry had promised didn’t appear to be part of the registry agreement drawn up for dot-xxx (I’m pretty sure they have been pulled in since).

In February 2007, the GAC chair sent a letter [pdf] to ICANN’s chairman saying that the GAC wouldn’t have time to send a public response before the Lisbon meeting, and reiterating its message from Wellington.

And finally, in Lisbon in March 2007, it referred back [pdf] to its message in Wellington again and said it wanted more information from the Board than it had provided, and drew attention to a comment from one government that it was concerned ICANN could become a regulator under the terms of registry contract.

And that is the extent of advice the GAC has provided to the Board on dot-xxx. None of this means there is any reason that ICANN can’t start negotiating a final registry contract with dot-xxx and it certainly doesn’t point to any “potential violation” of the ICANN bylaws, as the staff paper has argued.

But minutiae aside, let’s look at the reality of the situation: if the GAC *is* asked by the Board to comment on dot-xxx, what can it say other than: we’ve already told you what we think?

What’s worse from the GAC perspective is that if the Board puts off negotiating a registry contract with dot-xxx until it gets back, the GAC could be put into the impossible position of effectively deciding whether a new top-level domain that has passed all the evaluation criteria *and* been through an independent review process should move ahead.

If the Board does insist on asking the GAC an empty question, is it going to be very difficult to paint it as any more than an unnecessary additional process in the approval of dot-xxx.

Everyone wants to put this issue to bed after years of process, and that means no additional processes.

The Board needs to be seen as not only accountable but responsive to its own independent review. I for one hope it puts an end to what has been a damaging six years for the organization as a whole and just says yes to dot-xxx on Friday. I’m sure the GAC will understand.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was hired by ICM Registry to write a summary and analysis of the recent public comment period on dot-xxx and I have also done some communications work for the company. Read into that what you will.

Nothing aids careful discussion and debate more than loud repetitive ringing. So thank you the Square Meeting Centre in Brussels for introducing not one but two ringing systems that go off every 30 minutes: a fire alarm and the bells from the nearby cathedral.

Despite this auditory assistance, the second (third) day of the ICANN meeting saw plenty of discussion. And some testy exchanges.

Most lively was when ICANN finally came good on its six-year promise to provide the country code managers with a figure for how much they actually cost the organization.

This has been a long-running argument: the country code managers will only providing voluntary contributions (because they don’t want to implicitly accept ICANN has authority over them), and ICANN wants more cash than it gets through this system.

The stalemate was finally broken when ICANN finally produced some figures this morning. Unsurprisingly, the ccNSO didn’t react to an annual invoice stretching to millions of dollars with unbridled glee. So what did it do? Well, it reads like a punchline to an ICANN joke: it created a working group to discuss how it might pay it.

This approach irritated ICANN’s chairman – who comes from the ccNSO – who complained that maybe the ccNSO should have thought about how to pay before now. Current chair Chris Disspain complained back that there wasn’t much point in going down that path when it wasn’t known whether the bill would be $1 million or $10 million. And so on, back and forth.

What was interesting though was, like receiving a restaurant bill and wondering whether your group really did have six bottles of wine, the ccNSO started drilling into what it was actually being asked to pay for.

Top of the question-marks appeared to be the $400,000 a year (for 10 years) cost of a new building in Palo Alto for CEO Rod Beckstrom and a claim that a TV studio was being installed for The Rod’s personal benefit. (Something that has since been denied.)

No one seemed sure about the TV studio – at least not enough to ask Rod to his face where he turned up 20 minutes later.

I fought the law and the law got a PDP

After yesterday’s main session in which law enforcement asked for changes to the RAA to protect us all from terrible cybercrime, the registrars hit back in semi-private with the ICANN Board.

They weren’t happy about the fact that the contract that defines their entire business had become a top news item for fixing child porn, gun running and all sorts of nastiness, and they told the Board as much. They argued, not unreasonably, that there was a thing called the policy development process and they’d rather big changes were made through that.

Chairman PDT did a good job of dispelling concerns, agreeing that policy shouldn’t come in through the back door but also telling the registrars – who often make the mistake of believing they are somehow special – that the community does have a role in deciding the contract.

The cybercops will no doubt despair at the systems that stop them making the world a better place; but the reality remains that building a system around the worst-case scenarios just creates a system that no one wants to use.

Party time

So dot-shop is taking an interesting tack. It doesn’t bother to argue the whys and wherefores in endless policy discussions; it just throws bloody big parties.

This time, party-goers were greeted with two women in white cowboy outfits inside large transparent balls waving seductively to them.

Presumably there is a catalogue somewhere that allows you to choose the enticing party greetments you want. I wouldn’t be surprised if attractive blondes in skimpy outfits placed in giant inflatable balls wasn’t on the front page.

Makes you wonder what else you can get. Flame-throwing mongeese in mini-skirts? Negligees made of vodka? Who knows? We’ll have to wait until Cartagena to find out.

GAC attack

Nothing can alternative between mind-numbingly dull and fantastically significant like a GAC meeting.

The GAC-Board get-together at every ICANN meeting is required viewing for just this reason. The room was packed. Chair Janis Karklins tried to persuade us this was because the largest-ever number of governments were present (58) but really it was because this is where the high politics are done.

True to form, the first half of the meeting was so extravagantly dull that several people tried to throw themselves out the windows because it was quicker that having to say “excuse me” to 96 people on the way out the door.

It was, of course, about semantics. In this case the word “advice”. What does this mean? When did the GAC give “advice”? Is advice always “advice”, or was it sometimes a mix of advice and comment. What advice could the Board provide to the GAC about the way its provided advice? What advice could the GAC give to the Board about its advice? And would that in itself be advice?

The problem of course is that the word “advice” appears in the ICANN bylaws and so, in inimitable fashion, hundreds of people have been obsessing about it ever since. The answer, which surely must have been screaming in others’ heads apart from my own, was “use a different bloody word; anything; ‘derek’, we don’t care, just stop saying the word ‘advice’.”

Suddenly though it got interesting when the GAC informed the Board, pretty bluntly, that the whole Public Order and Morality clause – reduced to, yes, PoMo – in the new gTLD guidebook was, well, completely useless and had to pulled out.

This is bittersweet news to all those who fought pitched battles more than a year ago to argue that it shouldn’t be included (but for entirely different reasons).

Even better than that, first the Board, then the GAC and then the GNSO publicly disowned the clause and almost as fast informed everyone else that they weren’t responsible for coming up with a replacement.

As ever the impossible task of keeping everyone happy fell to ICANN staff who are now expected to pull off the impossible in roughly two months.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so important.

Nanny-time

Of course what everyone fails to recognise on a higher level is that the only reason this is an issue is because everyone involved in ICANN is basically nannying the Internet. It’s their special baby and they don’t want any nasty real-world issues upsetting it.

Those who don’t feel that they have a god-given right to decide the future of the Internet may like to point out that if someone wants to outlay $200,000 to get an offensive Internet extension, a further $100,000 to run each it each and every year, and then seek to persuade people to sell the domains under it for no reason except to have a rude ending on a website, then let them.

It will go precisely nowhere. And even if it does, everyone will just block them.

You can pretty much sum up this mentality in a comment from one Board member who pleaded that ICANN didn’t create any top-level domains that weren’t made available in every country in every part of the world.

I admire this attempt to keep the hippy-like philosophy of the early Internet days alive but unfortunately, outside the hallowed walls of ICANN, the Internet has stopped being a special place and has just become a place.

ICANN hates the fact that new gTLDs are going to bring an end to the clubby atmosphere of the Internet where everyone knows everyone – which is ultimately behind the years and years of work on the new gTLD process. But at some point people have to let their little darling grow up, become an adult and start making its own decisions.

Day 4 preview

What’s on tomorrow? Well, not very much to be honest. It may be time to visit the cafes and bars around the Grand Place and grab a seat for England’s impending World Cup victory.

After a slumbering, almost tedious, first day, the meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) came alive today for its official opening.

Gone were the musical extravaganzas of the previous two meetings (a shame?), but CEO Rod Beckstrom made sure there were fireworks by giving a defiant speech to his organization’s critics.

The VIP quotient was also pretty high, with EC President Herman Van Rompuy and the European Parliament star-turn Silvana Koch-Mehrin appearing on stage and EC vice-president Neelie Kroes providing a video message.

The politicians gave policy-wonks a wide variety of cheap thrills by throwing in knowing but vague statements about Internet governance and the IANA contract. But Beckstrom went to town, insisting on his autonomy when it came to the simmering dot-xxx issues, the new Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT), and public criticisms of comments he had made at the last meeting about the DNS’ security and stability.

The ATRT – which has been doing the rounds talking to all constituencies this week – was not happy and fired back just a few hours later in its public meeting with a statement that, fascinatingly, has since appeared on ICANN’s front page.

“The members of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team note Rod Beckstrom’s disparaging comments this morning about the objectivity of our work. It is disappointing that he feels compelled to lay a foundation for discounting our work, even as it is only beginning,” it began.

Security? Interesting?

With the blood flowing, ICANN then pulled off one of the best panel discussions it has had since Jothan Frakes highlighted the issue of domain tasting in Marrakech four years ago. Paul Mockapetris and Dam Kaminsky, as non-ICANNers but recognized DNS and security experts livened up a discussion about the latest efforts to make the Internet’s infrastructure more secure.

It was what ICANN can and should be – a hotspot of the best and brightest when it comes to the Intenet’s underlying domain name system.

Then came the ATRT, which soaked up responses from the community about flaws in the organization’s processes. Although, apparently, things were much livelier in its earlier meeting with the registrars where GoDaddy’s representative was champing at the bit to explain why she felt ICANN was failing in its extensive accountability and transparency promises.

And then, the stalwart of every meeting for the past 55 years, the Applicant Guidebook session.

I don’t know what it is – possibly being able to view the light at the end of the tunnel – but the man in charge, Kurt Pritz, was on fire.

Normally the updates on what changes have been made since the last round of endless argument and back-biting policy madness is too tiresome to watch. And Kurt, for all his hard work and pleasant demeanour has always been uncomfortable on stage and answering questions.

Not today. He handled the stage, and the questions – including the idiotic ones send in online – like a master. Alternatively funny, serious, precise, imprecise, straightforward and complex, you really felt – perhaps for the first time – that ICANN has this hideously complex process under control.

I thought I might be going mad but I checked with several others and they all felt the same. There can be no clearer signal that the gTLD extended safari is finally coming home.

Boozers

All this, frankly enjoyable activity appears to have put everyone in the mood to get stupidly drunk at a variety of free events, with attendees stumbling into hotel across central Brussels and generally giving the Internet a bad name. God bless them all.

Thankfully it’s constituency day tomorrow, so people can nurse their hangover while pretending to listen to what their close colleagues have to say. Expect there to be a shortage of coffee.

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom gave a defiant opening speech at the opening of the organization’s meeting in Brussels.

Answering accusations that the organization is ignoring its own accountability processes, that the staff and Board have insufficient checks on their work, and that he himself had overstepped the mark in comments he made to governments at the last meeting in Nairobi, Beckstrom was unapologetic.

“Much has been made in the media of ICANN’s consideration of the application for a dot-xxx top-level domain, which the board will address this week,” he acknowledged, before repeating the assertion that caused much of the trouble: that the decision, made by an independent panel, was “non-binding” on the Board.

Instead, Beckstrom pointed, rather weakly, to how he had “been struck by the transparent way ICANN is dealing with this controversial issue”.

Transparency – and accountability – are hot topics in ICANN at the moment, especially with an independent review team containing the US Commerce Secretary looking at the organization specifically on these two issues.

That team has just started its work but already Beckstrom appeared to make it clear he was prepared to ignore their conclusions if he didn’t agree with them. Pulling a quote from a 2007 report by the One World Trust, he pointed out that ICANN “is a very transparent organization”. But it is still improving, no matter what others may say.

“We recognize the right of the Review Team to publicize their views,” Beckstrom pre-empted. “But we also recognize the sizeable challenge they face – as a group that includes interested industry stakeholders and contracted parties – in attempting to produce an objective and independent report that the board and community will find useful.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, he repeated the message. “We are certain the Review Team will find areas where they believe further improvement can be made.” But? “But we stand on our long record of pushing the edge to make ICANN as transparent and accountable as it is possible to be. We welcome constructive help and call on the community to join us in embracing this commitment.”

The inspiration for this refusal to accept external criticism? Rene Magritte. “Surrealist artist Rene Magritte had a unique view of art and life,” Beckstrom mused. “Magritte famously painted a picture of a pipe and wrote on it ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’ – ‘this is not a pipe’.”

What has this to do with administration of the domain name system? “There’s a lesson there. Challenge assumptions. Question what you see.”

Certainly people have questioned what they heard when, a few months ago, Beckstrom created a firestorm by telling the Governmental Advisory Committee that the DNS was in a precarious state and was under attack as never before. The comments sparked a furious letter [pdf] from the head of one of ICANN’s arm – the ccNSO – claiming that they had the “potential to undermine effective and productive relationships” and calling his remarks “alarming”. A second warning letter [pdf] was also sent by the Internet Society’s president, scolding Beckstrom and pointedly asking for facts to back up his assertion.

Beckstrom’s response to the public slapdown? “You may disagree with what I said, and openness to different viewpoints is what makes our community strong.” Why did he say it? “I said it because I believe it is the truth. And more than twenty years of experience in risk management have taught me that in addressing highly complex systems, it is better to be more concerned about risk than less.”

Having been asked for facts to back up his statement, he threw the issue back at the community asking them to come up with information.

This defiance is a marked departure from the previous CEO – who is at the conference – who always tried to avoid conflict, particularly in public. It is also a risky strategy in an environment that spends much of its time trying to get people to agree with one another.

It seems the Beckstrom honeymoon is over. Now, as all previous ICANN CEOs have discovered before, he is going to have to earn his money.