ICANN 40 San Francisco Meeting - Tuesday 15 March

Tuesday was the day of contituency. All the constituencies were meeting on the day and I focussed on ccNSO and Business Constituency.

1. In ccNSO, there was a joint review with the IDN working group and I followed it quite closely. There are total 34 applications which have bee received under the IDN Fast Track Process and 27 of them have been approved consisting of 17 countries / territories. There were issues here as the application for Bulgaria and Greece have been rejected on the advise of the confusion which their characters can create and it came to notice that there is no appeal process which has been setup as part of the Fast Track Program.

2. In the second half focussed on Business Constituency and the main points which were discussed are as follows:

-->Using Brand Name as a String - brand being a trademark, it was urged to participate in the first round of applications and was also discussed in the context of IDNs. Big organizations having diverse business interest can use it for brand promotion. There are indications that cannon and deloitte might be going ahead with the gTLD.
-->Discussion about WHOIS Studies and Future Improvements in WHOIS
-->Security Stability and Resilience Challenges in the context of Business Constituency. The discussion saw Jeff Brueggeman, SSR Review Team; Adam Palmer,Symantec; Scott McCormick; Patrick Jones, ICANN; Greg Rattray,FS Round.
-->GNSO Council Agenda Review wherein Members Views And Priorities regarding GTLDs and updates were provided by Steve DelBianco, VC, Policy Coordination/Zahid Jamil John Berard, BC Councilors

The evening was quite a chilly one as it was raining but a musical night with great numbers being played by the particiapnts on th eKaroke made for it. It's nothing better to be with music and wine and dance in Union Square of Sanfrancisco.