Stephane Van Gelder

Chanced upon a little beauty of an article about how the US invented and paid for the Internet and should therefore keep controlling it forever.

Now I realise that the author's views aren't shared by everyone in the States. The site on which the article is being run is obviously slightly Republican friendly to say the least, and the article's "foreigners are going to take our Internet away from us" diatribe is obviously more political than anything else. Still, I can't help but be worried when the article's author, Bradley A. Blakeman, is an ex American President's deputy assistant and now teaches politics at a major US university.

With credentials like that, some people might actually believe untruths like "the Internet was invented by America". That's sad, because while there's no doubt Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn are the Net's fathers, what about its uncles? People like Frenchman Louis Pouzin, who is credited by both Cerf and Kahn as having laid the foundations for the Internet's cornerstone: the TCP/IP protocol.

And let's not forget that without Brit Tim Berners-Lee, I wouldn't have even been able to read Blakeman's fascinating piece of propaganda on a formatted webpage. At CERN (a European research institute located in Switzerland), Berners-Lee invented the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) and the Hypertext Markpup Language (html), two crucial parts of the true multimedia experience that is today's Internet.

Most sane, rational people realise that great enterprises like the Internet aren't built by a single person or nation. That would be like crediting all research and scientific progress made on AIDS to France because Luc Montagnier discovered HIV about 5 seconds before American Robert Gallo did.

But Blakeman doesn't seem to share the view that the Internet belongs to everyone. He argues that the Obama administration has "surrendered the Internet to foreign powers", that there is "no better country to protect the Internet than the United States" because he says "We invented it, and we paid for the research and implementation that made it possible. We are the freest most tolerant nation on earth..."

As I said, I'm worried. It's clear that the ICANN community still has its work cut out to ensure a truly global oversight of the Internet, if it has to fight such narrow minded views from the nation that still technically controls the Internet today.

Read the article here.

After much worrying, talking, arguing and hesitating, ICANN has gone and done the right thing. Despite certain security concerns from participants from countries like the United States or the UK, the Nairobi meeting is on.

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom confirmed Nairobi after Friday's special meeting of the ICANN Board, convened specifically to discuss the situation.

"We recognize that many developing country cities have higher ambient levels of street crime and much of the world (the U.S. and Europe included) faces international terrorist threats and attacks," Beckstrom explained after the meeting. "Both are simply facts of life."

It's good to see some measure of common sense returning to this Nairobi debate. Yes there are risks, risks are everywhere. But ICANN is a global organisation and as a member of that organisation, I would rather not see it slap Kenya or any other country in the face by snubbing it (this would have been the second time for Kenya, a fact which would have understandably irked the Kenyans).

"Given that ICANN is committed to "One world. One Internet. Everyone connected." we have engaged and will continue to engage with the whole world," concludes Rod Beckstrom.

I couldn't agree more.

Although unconfirmed at this stage, the ICANN grapevine has been buzzing the last few days with the news that ICANN's Vice President for policy development Denise Michel was about to be replaced.

Former Manager of public participation Kieren McCarthy has just confirmed the news on his personal blog with a scathing piece. "Of the hundreds of people I have worked with, some of them very difficult, I have only truly disliked two," writes Kieren, before going on to explain that Denise was one of them and that she "infected the whole work environment with destructive and negative behaviour."

Since becoming a GNSO Councillor, the GNSO being responsible for setting policy for the generic namespace, I have obviously worked with Denise on several occasions, but never closely enough to know whether Kieren's words are an exaggeration or not. 

But I did work closely with Kieren on several projects within ICANN. I know him to be an extremely fair and honest person that will always tell it like it really is. So if he thinks that "when, in six months’ time, everyone is much happier about the process used to decide vital policies for the global Internet, you will be able to track it back to this day," adding "the Internet has become a better place today" I tend to trust his judgment.

Kieren names David Olive as Denise Michel's replacement and the new person in charge of what is one of ICANN's key departments.

What's going on in China? After taking everyone totally by surprise when they closed .CN to individuals on December 14, 2009, the Chinese authorities then went one step further and announced that, starting January 6, 2010, non-Chinese registrars would be barred from registering new names.

What brought this on? The new rules are a complete turnaround in policy from the laissez-faire attitude exhibited by the Chinese government and enacted by the national registry CNNIC ever since .CN was opened up as a top level domain on March 17, 2003. From that point on (previously the Chinese namespace was only open at the 3rd level, e.g. .COM.CN), China has seemingly had but one goal: amass as many .CN registrations as possible. And when the 14th million .CN domain was registered during 2009, the Chinese TLD became the world's most prolific country code.

Then came chaos. China claims the new ultra-restrictive registration rules are to limit the "authenticity, accuracy, and integrity" of its namespace. Chinese netizens have even been encouraged by the authorities to report offending websites and the domain names behind them.

However the new rules look more like a kneejerk reaction than anything carefully planned. After China's initial announcement, no-one at CNNIC or elsewhere seemed to know exactly who could register what. Not a day has gone by since during which accredited .CN registrars like INDOM haven't heard contradictory reports of what they can and can't do.

Last week, it finally seemed clear that only registered entities such as companies would now be eligible for a .CN domain and that foreign registrars could no longer register new names but could continue to manage their existing names.

Then, just as the dust finally seemed to be settling, I chanced upon this little gem. It would now seem that CNNIC has reversed the rules and will allow individuals to register domains after all. (Although INDOM's registry liaison team has been unable to confirm this and no official announcement has been made by CNNIC). "If we stop individuals obtaining domain names, they will register abroad or fake themselves as company applicants anyway," a director at CNNIC is quoted as saying, as if no-one could have thought of that 3 weeks ago…

Someone hand me that bottle of aspirin, please!

Now here's a good idea. This site gives a list of new gTLD initiatives that are known to exist. You get the TLD itself, plus related web Facebook and Twitter pages. Not all the entries in this list are up to date, but in the fast moving world of new TLDs, that's hardly surprising and certainly not a major problem.

Came across this weird domain name google.aero, which doesn't belong to Google and points to a rather farcical web page. I just have 2 questions. Why isn't Google doing anything about this? And what's the owner of this domain playing at, risking the big G's wrath by registering a Google domain and then using it for… nothing much really?

During the December 9 Board meeting, ICANN staff presented a revised project plan for completing the implementation of the new gTLD program. This is basically an updated roadmap leading up to the first application round, i.e. the start date when entities all over the world will be able to apply for their own Internet Top Level Domain.

This plan was summarised during yesterday's GNSO Council meeting. These are the major next steps expected by staff:

- A 4th version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG) will NOT be published in time for the next ICANN meeting (Nairobi, March 2010). However, significant excerpts of the DAGv4 will be, including items on trademark protection, post delegation dispute resolution, malicious conduct and the proposed registry agreement.

- A 4th DAG is expected to be published in time for ICANN's second international meeting of 2010 (Brussels, June). This should be very close to the final version.

- Following community discussion, a final version is expected to be published for the final meeting of next year (December, in Latin America (exact venue not determined yet)).

This means that the first round will likely not open until Q2 2011 at the earliest.

Although this is obviously unwelcome news for all those prospective applicants that have already been waiting for many years for the first round, this cloud does have a silver lining.

It is very likely that there will be some kind of Expression of Interest (EOI) system allowing applicants to "take their place in the queue" pending the full launch of the program with that first application round.

ICANN staff are working on a model already and will suggest that the EOI be made mandatory for all applicants. This means that even though the first round won't happen before 2011, applicants will still have to be ready to submit an EOI some time in 2010. Those that do will have taken an important first step towards their new gTLD.

However, before an EOI system can be implemented, at least two issues will have to be resolved. The first pertains to the 3 character minimum rule, which may be modified in some way. This has to be finalised as applicants need to know what they can apply for before submitting an EOI. There is also the registry/registrar vertical separation issue, as applicants need to know who (i.e. what type of entity) can apply.

The EOI, or Expressions Of Interest in the new gTLD program, took a step closer to reality during the ICANN Board meeting on December 9.

The Board directed staff to present a proposal for an EOI process model. This model is to be presented to the Board during its February 2010 meeting. If approved, the EOI would then be implemented.

Although some see the EOI as a sort of fast-track to applying for a new gTLD, others worry that asking staff to work on such a plan may take crucial resources away from the main work still to be done on the actual new gTLD program. But the Board obviously took the view that the EOI would be a good way of taking the new gTLD program forward.

Staff will no doubt work on the proposals that have already been made by an informal working group, of which I was a member as an observer. These include charging a submission fee of USD 55,000, making participation in the EOI mandatory for all prospective first-round applicants and publishing all the EOI received.

Deputy Mayor of Paris Jean-Louis Missika, sporting the official .PARIS badge, takes a look at the .PARIS support website. Photo INDOM.

Jean-Louis Missika discusses .PARIS with a few of the 1,000 guests attending the City of Paris event in the prestigious Paris town hall. Photo INDOM.

A .PARIS supporter signs the online form using one of the dedicated terminals set-up in the Paris town hall. Photo INDOM.

A special event was held last night in one of the Paris town hall's prestigious rooms to highlight the city's bid for a .PARIS TLD.

Organised as part of the Web09 show, a showcase for innovation on the Internet, the brought together over 1,000 people.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë was in attendance and Deputy Mayor Jean-Louis Missika gave a speech, in English, on the .PARIS initiative.

Attendees were able to use specially set-up computer terminals to surf the dedicated .PARIS website and show their support for the TLD by signing the web form. Nearly 400 people have already signed.

INDOM is assisting the City of Paris on the .PARIS initiative and was one of the event's official partners.

Yesterday, the City of Paris launched a PR and communications campaign to garner community support for .PARIS.

A website (soon to be available in English on www.SupportDotParis.org) has been opened with a call for people to sign and show their support. Over the coming weeks, the site's content will be expanded with explanations of what .PARIS will be and who it will be aimed at.

Facebook and Twitter pages have also been opened to foster participation and discussion around .PARIS, a project for which INDOM is acting as consultant to the City of Paris.

I believe ICANN has just lost of man of great talent. And I wager that few within the ICANN cognoscenti would disagree that when he left a few days ago, General Manager of Public Participation (GMPP) Kieren McCarthy tore a big hole in the organisation's ability to look beyond itself.

Kieren's final act as ICANN GMPP highlights this better than any diatribe from me could ever hope to. He wrote a "leaving report", with the same iconoclastic take on ICANN that he exhibited during the 2 1/2 years he worked there, and in which he makes a number of recommendations for future public participation efforts. The report makes for fascinating reading for anyone interested in the way the Internet is governed.

I obviously won't go over the full 20-page (mercifully short for an ICANN document) report here. I would however like to add a couple of points.

UK registry Nominet is warning against government regulation of the domain name industry.

A Digital Economy Bill proposed by the UK's House of Lords would give the government the power to, in effect, seize a registry and place it under direct governmental control in the case of registry failure.

Nominet has written to its members (the registrars) asking them to take part in a consultation and backing the registry's proposals to maintain the self-regulatory model under which Nominet and other UK-based registries work.

"There are two key issues at stake: self-regulation and public purpose," says Nominet Chairman Bob Gilbert in an email to members. "We (…) need more of you to actively show your support for Nominet and a self-regulated domain name industry. Make your voice heard!"

"We believe the domain name industry should continue to be self-regulated," Gilbert goes on to explain. "It has served members well up until now and we believe it will do so in the future too. On behalf of your Board, I urge you to get involved with this consultation so that together we can shape the future of Nominet and the domain name industry in the UK."

It's always a surprise for us domain industry people to realise that the "outside world" is also interested in what we do. Especially when it pertains to Internet governance and ICANN.

So last week, when two leading French newspapers, Le Figaro and Les Echos, ran a short piece on my election to the GNSO Council Vice Chair position, I was more than a little surprised. Up until then, I thought that outside of an ICANN meeting corridor, the four letters "GNSO" wouldn't mean a thing to anyone.

Fast forward to today, and Les Echos is running a half page piece on me as GNSO VC! A half page, right in the middle of France's leading business paper!! All I can say is: I'm gobsmacked!