insight 

The list of things that we’ll be discussing at the forthcoming ICANN meeting seems to be growing longer by the day. I’m travelling to Delhi tomorrow and you can bet that by the time I’ve landed there will be yet more last minute papers and additional meetings. For the time being, my topic list includes:

- The draft ICANN 2009 budget (just issued on Monday) which has expenses rising by $15m or 36% to $57m. One of the first things to strike me is that the cost of new gTLDs in 2009 is over $12m, but spend on security and stability is only $3.5m! It feels the wrong way around to me.

-  The NTIA request for comment and the ICANN approach to the mid-term review. Like a number of others, we’re calling for discussions about the possible transition during the remaining 18 months of the agreement. ICANN are in full lobbying mode though and are encouraging standard emails (for which they’ll helpfully provide the template) directly to the US Government calling for them to deliver on previous promises. I’m surprised at this approach, which has been amusingly labelled ‘astroturfing’ in Brett Fausett’s blog.

- The possible accreditation of registries. In theory, minimum standards for registry providers has to be a good thing for registrants and registrars, but the devil will be in the detail of course.

There will also be the latest on the new gTLD process, domain name tasting, IPV4 address exhaustion, domain name front running, DNSSEC and increasing participation. A busy week ahead then…..