No Such Weblog

Two pointers into the ALAC's list archive: A powerpoint file which I produced during some of the structure discussion; Scribe notes by Wendy Seltzer, covering the ALAC's meeting with some people from the Brazilian Internet community.

Some relatively recent, but pre-Rio, slides on WHOIS policy (and ICANN in general) are available here. I used these for a talk on WHOIS policy I gave to the International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications, in the week before the Rio meetings.

I don't think this made it into ICANN blogsphere, yet... Immediately before the GNSO council's 20 February telephone conference (at which the WHOIS Task Force's consensus policies were adopted), I posted this statement on WHOIS policy on behalf of the Interim ALAC.

Esther Dyson on ICANN reform, user participation, and more fundamental issues: Yes, it matters to some extent who is on ICANN's board -- or who is in power in Iraq -- but it's not as important as it may seem. Change the structure and you don't necessarily change the texture that determines much of what actually goes on. Structure helps change things over time, but it doesn't work on its own. People need to know what to do to use and reinforce the structure. She then (accurately) observes the importance of having a physical seat at the negotiating table, as opposed to just participating online.

I'd emphasize the word "just" in the sentence above: Online participation works much better once you had a beer (or Caipirinha) with the people you are working with (or against). Of course, cynics would express this by saying that making friends and manipulating people is much easier that way...