Author: Joanna Witt

Joanna Witt is a London-based freelance journalist and digital producer who has spent the majority of her career running high-profile websites for the BBC.

Having trained as a legal journalist, she went on to work on a number of trade publications, reporting on the advertising and marketing industry, and producing consumer health news for an online news agency.

She joined the BBC in 2003 and was staff for eight years, launching some of the corporation's most popular websites, many of which ran alongside live studio shows. As such she is particularly interested in the power of brands online and the nuts and bolts of producing successful and profitable sites.

She specializes in social media and has a strong interest in the power of SEO as the web develops. Joanna has a BA and an MA from Nottingham University.

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NIB
14 May 2012
[nib] Hague restricts access to The Pirate Bay

A court in the Hague has ordered the Netherlands' Pirate Party to stop helping people overcome blocks to file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. Anti-piracy group Brien complained the political party was helping users find ways to access the site, despite an earlier ruling ordering two of the country's largest ISPs to block it. The court also upheld an order banning the party from offering a proxy to enable people find links to The Pirate Bay without visiting the site itself. The Pirate Party describes the ruling as a win for Brien and a loss for democracy and a free Internet.
Transcript
30 March 2012
TLD Universal Acceptance

NADIA SOKOLOVA: Hello, everybody. We are going to give it another minute and then we will start.

KURT PRITZ: Welcome, everybody, to this session on universal acceptance of TLDs. I think it's going to be a very informative, important, and interesting session.

But for those of you that remember, back when we launched the sTLD round, the trial round of TLDs in 2003 and 2004, there were very specific questions at that time pertaining to the acceptance of TLDs.

People came to public forums at ICANN meetings and said some TLDs, domain names using some TLDs do not resolve in browsers. Some browsers screen out addresses as right or wrong, and many of the longer TLDs just don't resolve ore-mail doesn't work. ICANN should undertake some effort in that regard. And some effort was undertaken. ICANN was a lot smaller; did not have any significant communications wherewithal. Nonetheless, we embarked on certain efforts that are going to described by this panel today.
Transcript
24 March 2012
New gTLD Program Update

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be starting our next session, new gTLDs, program update, in two minutes. If you could kindly take your seats.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would be kind enough to take your seats, we'd like to start our program.

All right. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you're not in this meeting to listen to it, there are lots of places to go and talk, so we are going to begin this meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kurt Pritz, senior vice president, ICANN.

KURT PRITZ: Good morning, everyone. So I'm just going to give us a second to, like, close the door, because I'm vain.

So I was listening to President Chinchilla's speech, and two points. One is that it's remarkable that people can be emotionally moved by a speech where they're reading the translation of it. Kind of remarkable.

And two, that she characterized the Internet as a "hope" rather than a "threat." And I think in our own small way, that's how we chose to characterize the new gTLD program.
Transcript
15 March 2012
GAC Discussion on New gTLDs (Part 2)

CHAIR – HEATHER DRYDEN: Hello again, everyone. If we can begin to take our seats again, we'll continue with our work.

Let's restart our meeting. So what I propose to do this afternoon is continue the discussion about new gTLDs. And then, at the very end, we have some GAC business to take care of. And we can go back into a
short closed session just to deal with those items. Regarding new gTLDs, let's see whether, at this point, we are able to begin exchanging about some of the topics that we just heard about and had questions
about before the break and see whether it's possible for us to formulate thoughts or the beginnings of advice that we might want to give on those topics that would go into our communique this week. We did
have a fair number of questions around process and timing for current elements. But I would like to see whether we're in a position to begin formulating on some advice on those same topics at this point. So we
can see how that develops.
Transcript
11 March 2012
GAC Discussion on New gTLDs

CHAIR – HEATHER DRYDEN: Good afternoon. We're going to start in about 10 minutes. We had a delay with identifying staff to brief us this afternoon unexpectedly. I'll explain later. So in about 10 minutes we'll begin. Okay?

CHAIR – HEATHER DRYDEN: Good afternoon, everyone, if we could begin our plenary session this afternoon. So apologies for the delay in beginning our session.

For those newcomers to the GAC, it is a bit of a tradition that we don't quite manage to start on time. But Kurt Pritz, who was going to be presenting to us a bit later, has fallen ill. So we've been trying to
identify staff that could provide us an update on new gTLDs. So a couple of staff will be coming to join us in about 15 minutes.

So let's take care of some business items before then. And then, when they arrive, we can move to that session.

So welcome, everybody, to Costa Rica. And, as usual, if we can begin with some introductions around the table. And then we will begin the proper session. So I'm looking to my right. If I can ask you to begin,
please.

(Introductions)