May 18th, 2010
Yesterday, one of the biggest events in the history of the Internet took place; non-Latin top-level domains went live in the DNS root zone. In plain English, you can now type the whole of a domain name in Arabic script. Not just the left of the dot (as in dot org) but the right of it, too. The three new top-level domains are السعودية. (“Al-Saudiah”), امارات. ( “Emarat”) and مصر. (“Misr”). They are country code names in Arabic for Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
How did this happen? Years of collaboration and cooperation between countless technical, policy and linguistic experts around the world, endless patience and a fair amount of justified and motivating impatience for people to be able to use their own scripts and thus languages to access the Internet.
As Tina Dam, who leads ICANN work on internationalising domain names puts it, credit goes to the “registries and governments that have worked actively locally; the IDNA protocol authors; the policy makers; application developers” such as browsers who had to figure out how to make the url field read from right to left, and many, many more. Keep reading
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March 15th, 2010
One of my last days in Dublin before I moved back to DC consisted of:
1 trip to Tesco Finglas to buy printer toner, 3rd attempt, unsuccessful (reason: “oh yes, well those are the toners that we use ourselves so they’re all gone.”)
1 more hour uploading details to US State Dept. online app. Unsuccessful. Like last week’s attempts. The database times out, the server can’t be connected. Or it just decides on the 2nd last section that it’s had enough and you should start again anyway. And no, it won’t upload the versions painstakingly saved at about 1 minute a page. Go back to the very beginning, enter it all again – the official estimate is that it takes 75 minutes to get through the application data entry beginning to end. They’ve clearly not practiced as much as I have.
2 calls to US embassy – fobbed off by the switch board to an unanswered voicemail. Later at the embassy I’m told they *never* answer the phone in the morning. Well, at least these people didn’t charge me 16 Euros again this time to tell me that yes, as I’d asked them but they refused to answer before they got the money, this isn’t the number for G visas and I should call someone else. No, I couldn’t have my money back but I could get a receipt in the post. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: US Embassy Dublin
Posted in Internet | 6 Comments »
March 11th, 2010
At the ICANN GAC (Government Advisory Committee) and Board meeting this week in Nairobi, the first topic was the GAC Secretariat. The question was ‘how can the GAC get more secretariat and policy support for its work?’. For a dry and dusty sounding question, it actually touches on crucial issues of the role of governments in coordinating the domain name and numbering systems. Today I can happily report that last night, GAC moved much closer to pooling funds for secretariat and policy support. Brazil and the Netherlands are already committing funds to the project. This will be a very important step for the GAC as it will help it to be more effective within ICANN, and also demonstrates governments’ real commitment to the process.
The big reason GAC needs to beef up its support system is so it can do real work between ICANN meetings. Right now significant intersessional work, such as that on the GAC’s principles on IDN ccTLDs, is the exception and not the rule. The GAC wants to have input on the public policy aspects of big ICANN decisions, but it moves too slowly to play its full and expected role.
Asking everyone else to slow down to GAC’s pace just doesn’t cut it. The delays caused create ill will amongst the rest of the community and mean the GAC has less clout than it thinks it should have. Or, as non-GAC people might put it, the GAC wakes up towards the end of a long and public policy process and tries to insist on fundamental changes. As Ray Plzak – co chair with Heather Dryden of a Board/GAC working group – said, the GAC has learnt the hard way that “the longer you wait in a process, the stronger your statement has to be.” And the harder it is to have any impact, and the less your peers in other stakeholder groups think of your ability to be a team player.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: GAC, ICANN Nairobi, secretariat
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March 10th, 2010
Comment moderation isn’t normally switched on at this blog, but comments are held when they’re from new commenters. Sorry for any delays this causes. If you’ve already posted a comment here, your future comments won’t be held for moderation. If you’re posting your first comment, I’ll approve it as quickly as I can. And thanks for commenting!
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March 10th, 2010
What’s going to happen this week on .XXX? Nairobi is the first public board meeting since the independent review panel’s nonbinding declaration in February that ICANN acted against its own rules in refusing to go ahead with .XXX. Reports that ICANN is going to ‘do something’ about .XXX have gone around the world via BBC news, and even surfaced on the radio in rural Ireland. The ICM team are out in force here in Nairobi, and there is endless speculation about what will happen at the Board’s meeting on Friday.
ICM has no interest in being fobbed off with an invitation to join the new gTLD application process. That process is horribly delayed, of still uncertain timing and outcome, and would expose ICM to immediate competition from other porn-related TLDs. ICM has assiduously played by the rules and understandably does not wish to go to the back of the queue.
This could go one of two ways. First and most likely, the Board will fulfill its legal obligation to consider the panel’s decision by having, and being seen to have at its public meeting on Friday, a discussion of the ruling. Then, perhaps regretfully, it will punt on any action by adopting some sort of delaying mechanism. One way to buy time and maybe even some credibility would be for the Board to put the 2007 registry contract with ICM out for another round of public comment. ICM says it will take legal action if there’s any delay, though this might be hard to justify if it’s ‘just one more’ round of public comment. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: .XXX, ICANN, ICM
Posted in ICANN, Internet, new gTLDs | 1 Comment »
March 9th, 2010
I seem to have done a lot more typing than thinking today. It’s what my old LSE prof, Patrick Dunleavy would call a classic work displacement technique. One method I use to keep me focused on very long sessions is to take close to verbatim notes – it keeps my mind from wandering and makes me think harder about what I hear. As I’ve spotted that the public GAC/Board meeting that just finished only has an audio stream on the meeting website, I’m posting my Completely Unreliable Notes in case they’re useful to anyone else.
I hesitate to post these notes as the last thing I want to be known as is Typing Girl. This may be ICANN and it may be 2010 and the day after International Women’s Day, and not an episode of Mad Men. But the next thing I know, someone will be slapping me on the rump as I fetch their coffee. (In much the same fashion that Alec Baldwin grabbed Kathryn Bigelow’s after he gave her the 2nd Oscar. Classy guy.)
Anyway, I’ll run the risk of the perils of patriarchy and reproduce the notes after the fold, as a public service. Enjoy.
Disclaimers: if you read anything surprising or controversial, check against the audio recording in my link above. I’m far too lazy to put people’s proper names, and in the case of a couple of GAC reps, I don’t actually know them. So employ your best guess that ‘Bertrand’ is the suave Frenchman, Bertrand de la Chapelle, Rod B is indeed ICANN’s CEO Rod Beckstrom, and ‘Norway’ is, ahem, the government representative from Norway. Full list of GAC members is here. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Government Advisory Committee, ICANN Nairobi
Posted in ICANN, Internet | 6 Comments »
March 8th, 2010
After an amazing dance performance to open its Nairobi meeting this morning, ICANN’s CEO and President Rod Beckstrom threw down the gauntlet to African governments. In his opening speech, Beckstrom got quickly through the usual platitudes about the Internet’s potential to speed up economic development. He instead highlighted successes in development led by using a more bottom-up approach (the ‘Internet approach’) and identified Kenya as a leader. But despite all this good work, Beckstrom noted, there are still a billion people in Africa that need to be connected. What should be done for them?
Beckstrom invited east African heads of state from the IGAD meeting in this building tomorrow to come over to the ICANN meeting, taking ‘a few small steps for them and making a big leap for the Internet in Africa’. Then he told us how he really feels…
Beckstrom threw down the gauntlet to all African governments, asking them to:*
- Shatter telecoms monopolies. He asked ‘how can the poorest people on earth pay the highest internet prices?’ and called out high connectivity costs as an impediment to development.
- Dispel the untrue stories about the Internet circulating in Africa, specifically the myth that there aren’t enough IPv6 addresses for African countries. He said Afrinic, the regional Internet registry for Africa, is one of the finest RIRs in the world and has over a trillion addresses to give out already. Globally, IPv6 create enough addresses to give a million each to every man woman and child in the world. Beckstrom called on African leaders to hold their ministers responsible and dispel those dishonest scarcity stories. He went so far as to say that people who spread dishonest stories cannot be trusted to make policy.
- Get more involved in Internet policy making. 19 African countries are represented on ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, but over 30 are missing. If these countries don’t have a seat at the table, how can they shape the future of the Internet?
- Look at the Internet not just as a part of critical industrial structure, but as a platform for the future and for development.
Stopping just short of calling unnamed government people liars, Beckstrom unleashed some bold rhetoric about IPv6 and how, implicitly, untruths about the numbers available are being used to further a political agenda that is emphatically not bottom-up, not multi-stakeholder and not in the interests of anyone who wants an innovative, open and end to end network. It was a brave speech which, by some accounts, had already been toned down to better meet the political sensitivities of the region. Many thought it still went too far. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Afrinic, ICANN Nairobi
Posted in Africa, ICANN, Internet | 1 Comment »
February 24th, 2010
Three Google executives have been convicted of violating Italian privacy law because of a children’s bullying video posted briefly by Google in 2006. Although Google took down the offending video of several children in Turin cruelly taunting a mentally disabled boy, and subsequently helped authorities to identify and convict the person who posted the video, three executives were convicted today of violating privacy. A fourth employee who has since left the company had his charges dropped, which seems to indicate that a political point is being made. The executives in question are outraged, and former UK Information Commissioner Richard Thomas is quoted as saying the episode makes a mockery of privacy laws.
For years I’ve observed that Italy always pushes for the most extreme EU version of laws about privacy and security and then domestically gold-plates them into laws that would seem more at home in Turkmenistan. It makes other Europeans scratch their heads as the Italians generally aren’t willing or able to enforce their draconian laws. Several years ago over a pint in Brussels, an exasperated UK official told me:
‘The Italians have no intention of ever implementing this stuff, but we’re a common law country and if it’s on the books, we actually have to do it’.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Berlusconi, Brussels, Buttiglione, data protection, Google, Internet privacy, Italy, Marco Cappato, Stefano Rodota
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February 12th, 2010
Although I no longer work for ICANN, I’d planned on attending its meeting in Nairobi next month to meet old friends and drum up some work for my new consulting business. The Nairobi meeting is scheduled to run from 7-12 March. The biggest issue on the table is a crucial stage in the addition of new top level domains; the vote by the Board on how to handle expressions of interest. But in the last 24 hours, ICANN’s COO, Doug Brent, has published a security warning that may result in the meeting being cancelled.
If this happens, it will be a real blow for the Kenyan Internet community. A previously planned meeting in Nairobi was cancelled because of security concerns prompted by election violence a couple of years ago. I thought this was the wrong call at the time, as election violence tends to die down and our meeting wasn’t till several months later. But I didn’t question and don’t envy the people who have to make that decision.
An ICANN meeting brings about 1200 people from around the world to a country chosen from host applications about a year in advance. It’s a mix between a trade show and a party conference, with endless parallel sessions, soap-boxing, hallway deal-making and late night drinking. Probably two thirds of the participants are regulars, and there’s always a ‘back to school’ feeling on the first day as you greet people you’ve not seen in months with an enthusiasm that wears off in about a nanosecond. The dominance of the regulars causes ongoing criticism that the whole travelling circus doesn’t work to get more and different people to take part, and should halt its global peregrinations and stay put in L.A., Frankfurt or Singapore. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ICANN, Internet, Nairobi, new gTLDs, terrorism
Posted in Africa, Internet | No Comments »
February 6th, 2010
Nominet, the body that administers the .UK country code, is holding an EGM later this month to decide on its future governance structure. As my old colleague Kieren McCarthy points out, the proposals include “a larger Board, lower voting thresholds, explicitly recognising that Nominet has a “public purpose”, giving the Board the right to set pricing, and a promise to review the organisation’s current membership setup to pull in more of the Internet community into its decisions.” These are all very good things.
Nominet has been through the wars in the past couple of years, with the biggest battles provoked by domainers (bulk commercial buyers of domain name registrations) trying to take over the Board of what is essentially a public interest organisation. (Like all fights, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Kieren wrote about the power struggle last year.) DTI, now known as BERR, was alarmed and threatened to take it over altogether. A big part of the problem is that there’s a very low bar for voting rights – basically anyone who does bulk registration of names – and so turnout is low, meaning capture by self-interested groups is distressingly easy. The changes being proposed at the EGM would address this. But they need to be voted in…
Please do head over to Nominet and inform yourself about these issues. Full disclosure: Through my work with ICANN (where I finished up last month), I got to know some of the Nominet team and think they’re doing a good job in difficult circumstances.
Re-posted from the Crooked Timber blog. To take part in the discussion, visit this post’s permalink on Crooked Timber.
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