ICANN's ten or so day meeting period is getting underway in New Zealand, a wonderful place that in addition to its other virtues happens to be very accessible at reasonable prices for the large majority of Internet users on the planet.

Here are some early coments about the meeting:

• Bret Fausett bemoans the ever-shrinking transparency at ICANN...and we're talking starting from a low level here, folks.

  Ten minutes into the introduction Paul Twomey asks if he's being recorded and can talk off the record. Huh? I can understand the need for confidentiality when it comes to legal issues or personnel issues, but going off the record on the subject of new gTLDs in the middle of a policy discussion?

• Edward Hasbrouck notes that,

  An agenda for the Board meeting should have been posted by now, according to ICANN's Bylaws . But no agenda has been posted, casting doubt on the validity of any action the Board tries to take. And there's no indication that the Board plans to take any action to deliver on the public promise , made to me during their last face-to-face meeting in Vancouver in December 2005, that ICANN would allow an independent review in accordance with its Bylaws of its lack of opneness and transparency, as I've been requesting since almost a year ago.

• On the GA list -- still not moribund! -- Andy Gardner asks why ICANN's public financial statements are so far out of date. And indeed, as of today, the ICANN Financials page has as its most recent entry data for the Fiscal Year Ending 30 June 2004. The page says it was "last updated 30-Oct-2003".

Notice a theme here?