2000-11-15

9:00:00 pm

• Congressmen to ICANN: Full stop. Two members of Congress have sent a letter yesterday to a Department of Commerce official requesting that ICANN's approval process for new top-level domains come to an immediate halt.

  Edward Markey (D-MA) and Lois Capps (D-CA) requested that NTIA administrator Gregory K. Rhode derail the process that has been expected to culminate in an announcement tomorrow of a handful of new global TLDs. The Congressmen cited the danger that ICANN's choices may further the de-facto monopoly of established players in the domain-name registry business. For example, they called out the possibility that ICANN may favor an NSI-backed proposal to offer a .WEB TLD over that of Image Online Design, a company that has in fact been operating a .WEB registry for more than 4 years.

  I could not find a link to the Markey/Capps letter on either of the Congressmen's Web pages (but I am looking at a photocopy of it at this moment).

  I spoke to a Washington insider, who said (my paraphrase):

  Nothing will come of this letter. If it had been signed by two Senators in addition to two Congressmen, maybe. Markey is important but he's not in the majority party. The Administration is all in favor of getting new TLDs quickly. Maybe the Commerce guy will respond with a letter in 3 weeks, but ICANN is going to go on with its program.

2000-11-10

8:15:13 PM

• At ICANN. I'll be attending the ICANN meeting in Marina del Rey, CA next week. I don't expect to be able to keep the blog terribly fresh during that time but will try to publish important breaking news as it happens. Ted Byfield, the roving_reporter, will also be in attendance -- between us we ought to be able to do justice to the occasion.

  If you'll be in LA next week and would like to try to hook up, drop me a line.