Stephane Van Gelder

I believe ICANN has just lost of man of great talent. And I wager that few within the ICANN cognoscenti would disagree that when he left a few days ago, General Manager of Public Participation (GMPP) Kieren McCarthy tore a big hole in the organisation's ability to look beyond itself.

Kieren's final act as ICANN GMPP highlights this better than any diatribe from me could ever hope to. He wrote a "leaving report", with the same iconoclastic take on ICANN that he exhibited during the 2 1/2 years he worked there, and in which he makes a number of recommendations for future public participation efforts. The report makes for fascinating reading for anyone interested in the way the Internet is governed.

I obviously won't go over the full 20-page (mercifully short for an ICANN document) report here. I would however like to add a couple of points.

UK registry Nominet is warning against government regulation of the domain name industry.

A Digital Economy Bill proposed by the UK's House of Lords would give the government the power to, in effect, seize a registry and place it under direct governmental control in the case of registry failure.

Nominet has written to its members (the registrars) asking them to take part in a consultation and backing the registry's proposals to maintain the self-regulatory model under which Nominet and other UK-based registries work.

"There are two key issues at stake: self-regulation and public purpose," says Nominet Chairman Bob Gilbert in an email to members. "We (…) need more of you to actively show your support for Nominet and a self-regulated domain name industry. Make your voice heard!"

"We believe the domain name industry should continue to be self-regulated," Gilbert goes on to explain. "It has served members well up until now and we believe it will do so in the future too. On behalf of your Board, I urge you to get involved with this consultation so that together we can shape the future of Nominet and the domain name industry in the UK."

It's always a surprise for us domain industry people to realise that the "outside world" is also interested in what we do. Especially when it pertains to Internet governance and ICANN.

So last week, when two leading French newspapers, Le Figaro and Les Echos, ran a short piece on my election to the GNSO Council Vice Chair position, I was more than a little surprised. Up until then, I thought that outside of an ICANN meeting corridor, the four letters "GNSO" wouldn't mean a thing to anyone.

Fast forward to today, and Les Echos is running a half page piece on me as GNSO VC! A half page, right in the middle of France's leading business paper!! All I can say is: I'm gobsmacked!

The 4th Internet Governance Forum meeting is currently under way in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The country's information technology minister Tarek Kamel took advantage of the spotlight currently being shined on the local Internet community to announce a forthcoming Arabic version of Egypt's national domain.

Pronounced ".MISR" and spelled .??? in Arabic script, the new TLD translates as "Egypt". It will be applied for as part of ICANN's IDN ccTLD fast-track program which officially launches today.

Using .MISR, local Internet users will no longer have to type any Latin characters (both the domain and its suffix will be in Arabic) to access compatible websites. "Over half the Internet users around the world don’t use a Latin-based script as their native language," said ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom in a separate comment. "IDNs are about making the Internet more global and accessible for everyone."

No launch schedule has yet been released for Egypt's new TLD. But according to ICANN, once the requests are evaluated and approved, IDN ccTLDs are expected to come online during 2010.

A working group has been formed in response to the Seoul ICANN meeting Board resolution directing staff to "study the potential impact of a call for formal "expressions of interest," and provide a plan for Board consideration at ICANN's next Board meeting, in December 2009. The plan should include possible options and a risk analysis relating to the proposed action."

The group has published a draft charter and set itself an ambitious schedule in order to be able to bring before the Board a complete proposal for the implementation of an Expressions of Interest system and have it adopted by the next ICANN meeting in Seoul.

The draft charter includes a proposed working group timeline and a list of participants.

The forthcoming launch of the IDN fast-track for country code Internet extensions has a lot of Internet users around the world eager to be able to use their own character sets and alphabets to surf the Internet, at long last.

But it also has a lot of people worried. One common question: "how will IDN websites be accessed using a standard ASCII keyboard?" Well the guys over at TheSpoof.com have the answer. A special keyboard with 327 keys arranged around the regular keyboard layout and featuring characters from Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and even American Redneck!

And yes, it is a joke.