ICANNWatch | ICANN Misses Critical MoU Deadline - But Offers Vaporware as a Substitute

ICANN Misses Critical MoU Deadline - But Offers Vaporware as a Substitute
posted by Mueller on Friday October 01 2004, @08:39PM

ICANN's MoU with the U.S. Department of Commerce required it to "Define and implement a predictable strategy for selecting new TLDs" and required that "strategy development be completed by September 30, 2004" and its implementation "commence by December 31, 2004".

On September 30, ICANN issued a hastily drafted staff document purporting to be a strategy for selecting new TLDs. The document is nothing of the sort. To any informed observer, it is a cry for help and an abject admission of failure.

ICANN's "strategy document" is nothing more than a laundry list of issues associated with the selection of TLDs. For example, it does not propose a number of TLDs to be added on a periodic cycle, it does not define the periodic cycle to be used, it does not select an allocation method. The document makes no decisions regarding a process for resolving the issues it discusses. Moreover, the purported strategy has no support, much less consensus, from the ICANN constituencies - the document simply sprung from the staff without any notice or comment - obviously a last minute rushed effort to meet the deadline. In short, the document is pure vaporware. It will be interesting to see whether the Department of Commerce buys it.

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ICANN is Simply Stalling Until After the Election
by Anonymous on Saturday October 02 2004, @07:32PM (#14276)

http://onthenet.ambler.net/blog/_archives/2004/10/ 2/152984.html
"I've been waiting patiently for this report, as I saw it as the roadmap to getting .Web into the roots.
~~~~~~~~

ICANN is Simply Stalling Until After the Election

The DOC is not going to pull ICANN's plug in
30 days, in fact, the DOC can not do anything to
ICANN. The DOJ and other USG departments may be
able to do something. They can not act until
after the election. If Bush wins, there is one
set of steps that need to be taken. If one of
the other candidates wins, you might as well
forget about .WEB. If .WEB *were* added, it will
be handed to an ISOC insider, to allow them to
retire and promote the "party line". As it stands
now, all of the ISOC insiders are now well-funded
and .NET will really put them on easy street.
That is clearly Cerf's agenda. Funding to the
Apostels.

http://onthenet.ambler.net/blog/_archives/2004/10/ 2/152984.html

"I've been waiting patiently for this report, as I saw it as the roadmap to getting .Web into the roots. Whatever criteria ICANN chose to set down, I was prepared (and still am prepared) to simply agree and move forward. Alas, I can't even do that, as ICANN hasn't put any criteria forward. I believe there's little doubt that that was what DoC contemplated this report as being. Obviously, it is not.

So what to do? In the perfect world, those applicants still waiting would go directly to DoC and demand (ever-so politely) that DoC do something, since ICANN clearly won't.

Enough. Is. Enough."
====

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Comments on lack of compliance and oversight
by ehasbrouck on Tuesday October 05 2004, @11:28AM (#14293)
User #3130 Info | http://hasbrouck.org

I've posted comments [icann.org] in response to the ICANN non-strategy apaper, pointing out that the ICANN document fails to actually define a strategy, and that it misrepresents as comprehensive the consultant's report ICANN had commissioned, which acknowledged my outstanding questions but said they were outside its scope.

According to e-mail messages I received today from Kent Krispin at ICANN, comments to the public forum are being added to the Web archive manually, after those considered by ICANN staff to be spam or viruses are deleted. The comment forum supposedly opened last Friday, but no comments were actually posted to the ICANN Web site until today, after I queried ICANN about why my comments, twice submitted, still hadn't shown up on the Web after more than 24 hours.

Additional background on the (as yet unaddressed) issues I've raised, particularly about ".aero", ".travel", and the lack of oversight by ICANN of the exercise of decision-making authority delegated to sTld sponsors, is in the ICANN section of my Web site [hasbrouck.org].

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