Last Thursday, 4 October, I gave a presentation on ICANN at Loyola Law School as part of Loyola’s International IP Week in Los Angeles. The event was well attended and the students were very engaged. This was the third in a series of university outreach events leading up...

I moved to Brussels to work from our office here at the start of August. One of the things I’d normally do when moving is working out which ISP to buy a service from. I haven’t done that yet because ‘Internet’ access is bundled along with the rent, water and electricity...

There is a letter [pdf] from the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to ICANN concerning the use of their sTLD .post that may well have important implications for the future evolution of the domain name system. This letter was received on 5 September and immediately posted on...

In the interests of openness, we have compiled statistics for the posts we have deleted from the blog last month, September 2007, broken down according to person and type of comment. We have only listed those who had three or more comments deleted. There was no...

On 25 September, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey and myself (as the regional manager) visited Moscow at the invitation of the Russian Minister of Information Technologies and Communications. While over there we were also scheduled to meet some of the .ru Board members, the .su...

In advance of the ICANN Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, ICANN is conducting a number of events with area universities. Yesterday two sessions were conducted with the University of Southern California, a morning session with USC’s Information Sciences Institute and an...

Yesterday, we published a “San Juan to Los Angeles” newsletter to all those subscribed to ICANN meetings updates (you can subscribe here), covering ICANN “intersessional” work i.e. the flow of work between main ICANN meetings – in this case between San Juan in June, and...

In the interests of openness, we have compiled statistics for the posts we have deleted from the blog last month, August 2007, broken down according to person and type of comment. We have only listed those who had three or more comments deleted. There was no individuals...

One of the consistent gripes about ICANN is that we don’t provide sufficient information (which, incidentally is why there is an online survey for people right here to help us understand what you are looking for). This usually prompts the response from ICANN that in fact...

ICANN made a little piece of history in three countries a few days ago when it approved the delegation of the .KP domain for North Korea, the .RS domain for Serbia, and the .ME domain for Montenegro. For the former it marks a further step in their efforts to connect their...

One of ICANN’s most important jobs is to provide those interested in its processes with the information they need to interact fully. It is just as important that people are aware of what issues are currently being discussed within the organisation, what the outcome of...

The September issue of the ICANN magazine is out. This month it includes interviews with ALAC chair Jacqueline Morris, as well as CEO Paul Twomey. Recent Board meeting are covered, and the policy issues reviewed are: IDNs, Registry and Registrar contracts, and IPv6. Also,...

It’s irritated me for ages that whenever you see a reference to ICANN in the British press, it’s always called ‘Icann’. This gets right up my nose, though I can’t quite put my finger on why. The practice of denying us our God-given capital letters just seems a bit cheeky....

The GNSO is currently conducting fact-finding on domain tasting. ICANN posted a Request for Information on 10 August, and information may be submitted through 15 September 2007. Comments may be submitted to rfi-domaintasting@icann.org and viewed at...

As anyone reading this will hopefully be aware, starting next year there will be a more consistent and relaxed mechanism for adding new gTLDs to the Internet. Which leads to an inevitable and interesting question: what new generic top-level domains would be useful and/or...

The ICANN Blog will undergo maintenance on Sunday, 26 August 2007, from 0200 to 0400 UTC. Pages will be unavailable for viewing or posting of comments during that downtime. Thank you.

Two members of the Board, Steve Goldstein and Susan Crawford, addressed the ICANN fellows during the San Juan meeting. They gave interesting talks about the history of the net and the history of ICANN. You can listen to their conferences here: Steve Goldstein’s conference...

Every once in a while it is interesting to take a closer look at how top-level domains are used to differentiate things from one another. A new ad campaign by TIAA-CREF, a large non-profit US financial services organization, is playing off its status as a “.org”. The...

In a little over a month (September 10-12), IT professionals from around the world will meet at the Vatutinki residence near Moscow, Russia. Among them will be, from ICANN, Theresa Swinehart, Tina Dam and Veni Markovski, as well as Fred Baker and Patrik Faltstrom...

One of the problems with ICANN has always been finding out what exactly is going on. Those involved in particular discussions on particular issues have always been kept abreast, mostly because they are on the mailing lists or the conference calls where matters are...

In the interests of openness, we have compiled statistics for the posts we have deleted from the blog last month, July 2007, broken down according to person and type of comment. We have only listed those who had three or more comments deleted. There was one person with...

ICANN has opened a consultation on the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. See the announcement from Friday, 27 July 2007, and RAA Topics page at http://www.icann.org/topics/raa/. All the information you need has also been compiled on ICANN’s public comment webpage here....

A vital part of ICANN’s processes is the opportunity for there to be public comment on each substantial piece of work before it is put forward for final approval. However, the organisation has been criticised in the past for not flagging these public comment periods...

The North American RALO was signed at the San Juan meeting. It marked the end of the Interim ALAC since the final region of the world had formed an MoU with ICANN, and the formation of a new, more representative, and hopefully more cohesive, Advisory Committee that will...