There are now three forces capable of putting ICANN out of its misery, and thus capable of making the sort of credible threats that might make ICANN reform (instead of "reform"): the RIRs (which seem highly unlikely to do it, and are indeed negotiating the terms of their truce with ICANN), the ccTLDs, and of course the US government. At the moment the ccTLDs seem most likely to achieve something.

My impression is that it was a success (well organized and very interesting). There was some insistent criticism of ICANN, and yet most people, even among ccTLDs, seemed to think that the reformed ICANN should be given a try and that the 3-party Internet governance model originally devised into ICANN is the way to go.

The only true consensus from the meeting, though, was the fact that any global Internet policy-making body should not depend on the US Government, and this should be accomplished asap. In fact, this is perhaps the most pressing reason why some countries and ccTLDs are pressing for the ITU to somewhat step in. Especially, developing countries seem to see ITU as a more trustworthy and open forum than ICANN, of which some of them are even unaware. (Well... after a technical presentation, one person actually asked to the speaker "could you explain what you mean by the word "CNAME" - we need to know what it is". But this was the exception, most of the participants were quite prepared.)

The message I tried to convey there is that even if some of these points (for example, the one related to ultimate control by USG, or the reduced space for users) are agreeable, due to the very characteristics and history of the Internet there is a need for user involvement in Internet policy-making, so the original idea of ICANN as a 3-party governance structure is still valid. Then I pointed out that there is much synergy possible between ccTLDs and our RALOs, and that ccTLDs should encourage their memberships and user representatives to participate in our process. You can read my paper here [itu.int]. In fact, you should at least review the list of submitted papers [itu.int].

--vb. (Vittorio Bertola)