ICANN Composition

ICANN wraps up today and it has been a fairly lively meeting (Karl Auerbach has a summary of the public forum) with various controversial issues (such as the .xxx proposal) being debated. The number of attendees was relatively high at 740, and they come from 113 different countries and territories.

Some of the smaller or less developed countries here have included Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cayman Islands, Christmas Island, Cuba, Ethiopa, Faroe Islands, Gambia, Iran (12 people), Iraq, Israel, Niue, Serbia, Virgin Islands and Yemen.

Also of interest is that on the InternetNZ Blog we have a link to the letter sent from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the European Union to persuade them not to support putting the Internet under some sort of UN governance.

The letter is very strongly worded for a diplomatic letter. The opening paragraph refers to “paramount importance to the United States” and “essential infrastructure” – this is code for we will be seriously fucked off if you stuff this up.

Then Rice goes onto say “We regret the recent positions on Internet governance offered by the European Union”. Regret is also a very strong word for diplomats. Much stronger than that and you are talking Pearl Harbour 🙂

The level of officials at the WSIS PrepCom would have been reasonably junior, and I understand the earlier EU position had not been endorsed by the appropriate EU body. This letter sent at Foreign Minister level would have, I suspect, resulted in a degree of bollocking of said officials for their earlier position.