Disclaimer: I am on the Names Council and supported the resolution discussed in this article. --MM

There are not many substantive policy issues that can unite all the officially recognized constituencies of the Domain Name Supporting Organization. Registrars, registries including Verisign, trademark holders, the noncommercials, the General Assembly, and the business constituencies all have very distinct interests and positions on domain name policy. But opposition to GAC's resolution and ICANN's action plan overcame these barriers. In a remarkably swift and unified action, the DNSO Names Council on Thursday passed a resolution calling on the ICANN Board and GAC to rethink their resolutions regarding reservation of country names in the .info top-level domain.

The resolution was passed virtually unanimously. Only Guillermo Carey, claiming a potential conflict of interest with a client, abstained.

The moderately-worded resolution asks the GAC to reconsider its action and to read the WIPO 2 report on geographical indicators. It also requests Names Council participation in the ICANN "discussion group" to determine the fate of the frozen country names. The resolution urges "caution" on ICANN and GAC "to avoid a short-term reaction to a problem that is not inherent to dot info." Less diplomatic wording would put it this way: what is to ensure domain name providers and users that the same demands for special name-rights won't be made in every other new TLD? The resolution also observes "that there is not a full understanding of the implications for suppliers and users of retrospective action of the kind GAC seeks." This nicely-phrased sentence replaced an earlier draft asserting that such retrospective action would be "damaging to suppliers and confusing to users." The resolution also urges GAC to try to resolve the policy problems in more legitimate channels, specifically: WIPO, the DNSO and in consultations with other "relevant stakeholders."

Receipt of the resolution was quickly acknowledged by ICANN President Stuart Lynn, so it appears as if the resolution got their attention. The results of this resolution will be an interesting test of the strength of "bottom up" within the ICANN structure.