No Such Weblog

An unnamed source still working for ICANN has leaked this last-minute, top-down surprise staff draft. Enjoy.

I haven't been blogging much since the end of the Montreal meetings. ICANN is currently in the process of taking over the GNSO's infrastructure, but other than that so little has happened that the GNSO council even seems to have consensus not to have a telephone conference this month.

The GNSO's online infrastructure has moved to Marina del Rey: The web site is now at gnso.icann.org. Important mailing list archives: GNSO Announce, GNSO Council, GA.

The German trademark industry association is currently running an advertising campaign which urges consumers to buy trademarked goods. A particularly idiotic example of this advertising shows three completely uniform office droids (all wearing precisely the same colors, the two men even wearing the same ties) "celebrating" with a bottle of (supposedly) trademarked champaign.

Lifestyle (TM)? No, thanks.

Milton Mueller reports that the non-commercial users' constituency has a new charter proposal online.

At a special meeting by teleconference on 23 July, ICANN's board has re-elected Vint Cerf and Alejandro Pisanty as the board's chair and vice-chair, and has appointed members to its various committees.

The GNSO's WHOIS Steering Group is going to take up its work at a telephone conference on 7 and 8 August. The group still hasn't found an external chair, though.

Mike Palage on the GA list: For those of you that may not be aware, the US Senate is holding hearings on ICANN this Thursday afternoon. The list of tentative speakers are: http://www.senate.gov/ ~commerce/hearings/witnesslist.cfm? id=889 For those that are interested, audio of these hearings should be available via C-Span, http://www.capitolhearings.org/ (SEE SR253). The written testimony of each of the witnesses should also be available from the Senate website just prior to the commencement of the hearings.