The 2013 ICANN meeting in Durban, South Africa opened on July 14 and runs through July 18. Embedded above is a video of the opening remarks from ICANN President and CEO, Fadi Chehadé, that were made on July 15.
If you would prefer to read Mr. ‘s speech, ICANN has uploaded a pdf of the speech transcript, and you can download it directly from the ICANN Durban meeting website.
If you are interested in following along with the ICANN meeting, the organization makes a
There are many people from all parts of the domain name space who are presently in Durban, South Africa at the ICANN meeting. ICANN meetings are free to attend (aside from the travel and accommodations), and they are held three times a year in locations throughout the world. For newcomers who haven’t attended a ICANN meeting before, there is even a “newcomers’ track” that offers additional information for first-time attendees.
I have never attended an ICANN meeting before, but I think it would be interesting to attend one at some point. Upcoming ICANN meetings will be held in Buenos Aires in November, Singapore in March of 2014, and London in June of 2014. I am considering the Buenos Aires conference since that will be held right around the time gTLDs may become available to the public.
I assume that most casual domain investors and even serious domain investors that don’t have registry or registrar connections have never attended an ICANN conference. Of course, I could be wrong, so I would like to know if you have attended a conference, and if you would like to attend a future ICANN conference. Further, I’d like to know what you thought about the conference if you’ve gone and whether you think it would be good for a domain investor to attend.
There was quite a bit of news that happened this week that will have an impact on domain investors in one way or another. I didn’t get a chance to write about much of it due to spending a few days in Boston with some guests, so I wanted to give a bit of a summary with links to their sources.
This isn’t going to become a regular feature of my blog, but I want to make sure you’ve seen the news. If I missed something important, please share it with me in the comment section.
Earlier today, I shared information about how people can report domain names to ICANN when the Whois contact information is inaccurate. Although most of the commenters didn’t seem to like the idea of doing this, Abdu Tarabichi thought it might yield a more accurate response with an anonymous poll, and I agree with him.
Would you report a domain name to ICANN for having invalid contact information (like bouncing email address or disconnected phone numbers) in an effort to acquire the domain name? As I mentioned in the post this morning, I personally wouldn’t, but it’s more a matter of being better able to track down and contact the owner instead of taking the chance that the domain name is deleted and available for others to buy.
Your turn to vote anonymously:
In my update post yesterday, I mentioned how I find it to be a good sign when a Whois email address contact doesn’t work. I look at it as a challenge to find the owner to try and buy the domain name. Abdu Tarabichi of Domainsville replied to my comment suggesting that the domain name can be reported to ICANN, and if they can’t get in touch with the owner, it might be deleted and he could possibly catch the drop.
As he pointed out in his comment, ICANN does have a form to report a domain name that has invalid Whois information. The form is called the “Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form,” and you can file a complaint by visiting the ICANN website.
According to the website, “this form allows Internet users to submit a complaint to ICANN regarding incomplete or incorrect Whois data, including privacy or proxy contact information. The complaint is then forwarded to the sponsoring registrar, who must take reasonable steps to investigate and correct inaccurate data.”
In response to Abdu’s suggestion, someone
If the idea of Internet governance is appealing to you, a recent announcement by ICANN might pique your interest. A couple of weeks ago, a blog post on ICANN’s website announced that “ICANN’s Nominating Committee (NomCom) invites Statements of Interest and candidate recommendations from the Internet community for key leadership positions to fulfill ICANN’s technical and policy coordination role.”
Positions are open on the following boards and committees: ICANN Board, the Councils of GNSO and ccNSO, and the ALAC. If you know what these abbreviations stand for, you are ahead of the game. If you don’t, you can visit the link in the above paragraph to learn more about them and what they do.
People are often critical of ICANN, and this is an opportunity to get involved and become active in the greater Internet community. Personally, I have no interest in getting involved in ICANN, although I think it’s a wise idea for domain investors to at least stay apprised of current ICANN issues.
Kevin Murphy does a pretty solid job of covering ICANN issues on DomainIncite.com, and George Kirikos watches ICANN very closely and reports his opinion on Twitter.
