The .EU TLD begins its Sunrise Period today. For more information, visit EURID.eu.

News roundup

Dot-EU Domain Goes Live Today (Silicon.com) – Dec. 7

So Who Is Funding CFIT and Why? (The Register) – Dec. 7

EU Domain Name To Come Into Force (CBROnline.com) – Dec. 7

EU Plants “.eu” Internet Domain Name in Cyberspace (Pravda) – Dec. 7

Europe’s Own Internet Space Starts Wednesday (Reuters) – Dec. 7

I’m back from a fascinating, eye-opening week in Vancouver for the 2005 ICANN Annual Meeting. It was a long week, but worth the trip. The results of the meeting are better covered on other websites, but I will direct attention to the captioning from Saturday’s Public Forum and the results of yesterday’s Board Meeting.

Here’s another website interested parties should pay much closer attention to:
gac.icann.org. The GAC Vancouver Communique is available here. The GAC also has a new Public Forum for comments on GAC activities.

If you’re heading to the ICANN Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, I hope to see you there. Depending on timing & internet access, I may try some light blogging from the meeting. Bret Fausett’s ICANN blog is an excellent source of information on ICANN, and he frequently posts podcasts and audio from the meetings.

Under an agreement reached at WSIS in Tunis, there will be a new multi-stakeholder forum next year in Athens, called the Internet Governance Forum. The document is here in Adobe Acrobat.http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.pdf

The domain names InternetGovernanceForum.com and InternetGovernanceForum.org were registered yesterday and are for sale on Sedo.com.

This week the world will be watching Tunisia during the World Summit on the Information Society. InfoToday.com has a summaryof what’s at stake.

An aggregate of blog postings on WSIS is available here:www.wsisblogs.org

Interview with EU Commissioner Viviane Reding in Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,384561,00.html

“So where are we up to with this internet governance thing?” – The Register

Once again, read the paper from the Internet Governance Projecthere.

Here’s the agenda for today’s ICANN Board call:

8 November 2005
Special Meeting of the Board
Proposed Agenda 

- Consideration of .ASIA sTLD Application 
- Review and Consideration of Policy Development Process Results and Public Comments for “Procedure for use by ICANN in considering requests for consent and related contractual amendments to allow changes in the architecture or operation of a gTLD registry” 
- Board Governance Committee’s Recommendation for the Creation of a new Board Compensation Committee 
- Briefing Regarding Certain Fiscal Year 2005-2006 Budget Items 
- Authorization to Bind Professional Liability Insurance Proposal 
- Redelegation of .GS (South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands) 
- Approval of Legal Expenses 
- Single Letter 2d Level Domain Name Discussion 
- Authorization to Enter into Addendum to Marina del Rey Sublease 
- Proposed ICANN Bylaws Changes on Interim ALAC’s Certification of At-Large Structures 
- Proposed Guidelines for Implementation of IDN’s, v.2.0 
- Approval of Board of Director’s Expenses 
- Other Business

Bret Fausett’s internet Pro Radio podcast is always informative. In iProRadio #57, Bret discusses the ICANN-Verisign settlement and public participation in ICANN.

http://blog.lextext.com/_attachments/1343613/iProRadio-2005Nov4.mp3

Keep up the good work Bret.

The Internet Governance Project (http://www.internetgovernance.org) has released another paper in advance of the World Summit on the Information Society. This paper is a must read. Download it in pdf here: http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/Political-Oversight.pdf

“WSIS seems to be foundering on the issue of ‘political oversight’ of the Internet. IGP issues a new paper that clarifies the issues and provides concrete proposals for moving forward. We explain why WSIS must separate discussion of the role of governments in setting policy for all Internet issues from discussion of the narrower problem of ICANN’s oversight. By means of a careful analysis of the contractual instruments used by the U.S. government to supervise ICANN, the paper shows how the problem of U.S. unilateral oversight can be addressed in a way that is both politically feasible and avoids threatening the stability or freedom of the Internet.”

The recently approved sponsored TLD .mobi will require registrants to follow strict standards on web development, according to an article in Silicon.com (copy on ZDNet UK available here). For more information, visit www.mtldinfo.com.

On Monday October 24 ICANN and Verisign announced an end to their long simmering legal dispute and reached a settlement that will allow Verisign to retain maintenance of the .com TLD through 2012. Commenting on the proposed agreement, Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said: “This proposed agreement settles many of the long-standing points of tension between ICANN and VeriSign. The settlement opens the way for a constructive and productive relationship between ICANN and VeriSign that will benefit the global Internet community, and further illustrates the benefits of a multi-stakeholder approach.”

A copy of the press release from ICANN is available here. A link to the proposed settlement agreements is here. The .com Registry Agreement is here. Link to Bret Fausett’s podcast on the settlement is here.