Organization

Despite a number of pieces in its media trailing the move, India's government representative did not revert back to its CIRP plan for a new United Nations body to oversee the Internet. Discussions over "enhanced cooperation" at a WSIS meeting in Geneva revolved around either setting up a working group to look at the issue, or creating a map of current agreements forged for different countries and groups to deal with Internet-specific issues. The man identified as being behind the claim that India would push for UN control, Parminder Singh, later infuriated civil society (who he claims to represent) by arguing that big Internet decisions should be left in the hands of government officials.

After 40 days offline, ICANN finally reopened its application system for new Internet extensions. The company discovered a software "glitch" and shut the process down on the very day it was due to close the process. ICANN said it now expects to close new gTLD applications on 30 May, but failed to commit to a date when it would make applicant details publicly available. The expectation is that the data will appear on Wednesday 13 June, although following a seemingly endless series of delays, no one is holding their breath. There are over 2,000 applications for new extensions.

The European Commission has opened a "public consultation" on how to reduce the cost of rolling out broadband across Europe. The financial crisis has pulled a lot of the money that the EU was banking on to expand a high-speed Internet network out of its infrastructure plans. As a result the consultation is somewhat of a formal crowd-sourcing effort by the EC, aimed at companies and investors. Among other things, it is hoping to find solutions to the cost of digging of roads to lay down fiber - something it says will account for 80 percent of the overall cost of next-generation networks.

ITU and Internet community despair of each other over ITRs

"We are tied together, we are almost married," explained Alex Ntoko, the head of ITU Corporate Strategy, to a number of representatives of the Internet community last week in Geneva. If Ntoko is right, it quickly became clear that this is a loveless marriage.

During a polite but tense meeting, Ntoko outlined his organization's plan to revise a global treaty known as the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs). The ITRs were created in 1988, went into effect in 1990, and have not been touched since. They form one of the four treaties of the ITU - which are reviewed every four years, although it has taken 24 in this case - and they will be updated in December this year at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai.

ICANN held a two-day meeting for registries and registrars in its home town of Los Angeles. The meeting was dominated by the continued delay of its new gTLD process thanks to a software glitch in its application system. Company executives assured attendees the software was fixed and revealed the same system would be used for the "batching" process of splitting up 2,000+ applications into groups of 500. A few days earlier, ICANN had been urged [pdf] by a number of groups to scrap the batching system altogether.

Why the ICANN Board is getting rid of its end of conference Board meetings

The last Friday Board meeting we will see for a while?

A fortnight ago, the ICANN Board announced it was getting rid of its public meeting on the last day of its conferences.

The news has been criticized by in some quarters by those who fear the change will reduce the organization's accountability and transparency at a crucial time.

We met up with Board member Chris Disspain, who is also one of the members of the Public Participation Committee that has been reviewing changes to ICANN meetings, to discuss the rationale behind the change and what it means in reality.

So why the decision to get rid of the Friday Board meeting?

The European Commission wants Google to respond swiftly to suggestions that it is abusing its dominant position by giving preferential treatment to its own services in search results. An EC investigation kicked off in November 2010 following complaints from rivals and the EC wants Google to address the claims before moving to a formal investigation if necessary. The claims include the way the search engine pushes its own services differently from other competing products and the way it locks out rival brands by selling exclusive advertising around certain search terms.

Lovin' this new "glitch" thing. It's a fab way of making light of a tricky situation. It makes you wonder why others don't adopt it as a way of lightening the mood.

For example, ever since this global financial glitch started in 2008, everyone's been moping around, unhappy with their lot. Which is a lot of fuss for a glitch. Cheer up, it's only money!

To get a better sense of the inspiration behind the glitch moniker, I asked ICANN for information about how it came about. As one of the most transparent and accountability organizations the world has ever known, the legal team were only too keen to oblige and happily released a transcript of their discussion held at their headquarters in Marina de Lay just days after their application system was pulled offline.