By Lesley Cowley, Nominet

The latest ICANN meeting, held 26-30 June in Marrakech, highlighted a number of current issues including the closer co-operation between ICANN and country code domain name registries such as ourselves. The other main issues of the week, in my opinion, were as follows.

Firstly debate over the WHOIS continues. The generic Name Support Organisation (gNSO) is still discussing what domain name registration information should be available publicly on the WHOIS. The pressure coming from law enforcement and others has led the gNSO to pull back from their previous position of proposing only displaying minimal technical data on the WHOIS (a stand supported by those interested in data protection issues). This saga will no doubt continue.

Secondly, after proposals to introduce the .xxx gTLD were rejected in May this year, a series of Freedom of Information Act requests have been issued by ICM Registry (the company behind the bid) to the US Department of Commerce. ICM Registry is alleging that the Department played an influential role in the ‘no’ vote against its proposals.

Also concerning the US Dept of Commerce, the NTIA branch has issued a notice of inquiry to seek views on the continued transition of the DNS to the private sector. Nominet will be submitting a consultation response and attending the forthcoming public meeting on this at the end of this month.

On a personal note, my sincere condolences to ICANN board member Peter Dengate Thrush who very sadly lost his wife and several close family members in a tragic car accident in New Zealand. Our thoughts go out to him at this time.

This entry was posted in July, 2006.
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