Although ICANN’s 36th International Meeting here in Seoul has been underway for less than two days, it has already been quite eventful.
At Monday morning’s session on new gTLDs, a number of people voiced their frustration at a lack of definitive timeline around their launch (remember that applications were originally scheduled to be accepted in the early part of 2010, but it appears at this point that timeline is unlikely to be met). In the afternoon, representatives from Afilias, a registry services provider, and Demand Media, parent company of Enom, had a unique and spirited debate on the topic of Registry-Registrar separation. The session, held as a debate, addressed whether registrars involved in new TLD bids should be allowed to operate a registrar which sold the extension as well. An informal poll where participants were asked to shout their approval for one side over the other reflected the polarizing nature of the issue, as the room seemed split.
The final session I attended Monday was an open meeting of the Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group (PEDNR-WG), which is examining topics related to the abilities of registrants to recover domain names post expiration. This group is still in its early stages, with further updates expected in the coming months.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the workshop on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), another highly-anticipated discussion topic at the meeting. During that session, it was announced that the IDN application process was expected to begin November 16 (subject to ICANN Board approval). This will allow ccTLD operators to offer their extensions in native scripts should they choose to do so.
All three sessions I attended were standing-room only, as was the IDN session. It is clear that this conference is touching upon a lot of hot-button issues that are going to have a significant impact on the future of the Internet.
Today (Tuesday) is Constituency Day, where various supporting organizations of ICANN get together to discuss relevant issues for a full day. Tucows’ CEO Elliot Noss and I will sit in the meeting of the Registrar Constituency alongside many other ICANN-accredited registrars, where we will discuss a wide range of topics affecting registrars industry-wide.
Editor’s note: For those not in Seoul, ICANN offers remote participation via its website that allows you to attend the meetings virtually, complete with a video and audio stream plus a chat window.
Thanks to ICANN for the photos on their Flickr page and for releasing them under a Creative Commons License.
Tags: ICANN, ICANN Seoul 2009