With the third and fourth meetings in the International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP), which seems to be the dominant movement for debate over the future of the management of the internet domain name system (DNS) happening next month in Singapore and Buenos Aires respectively, it appears that Ottawa, Canada is emerging as the most likely venue for the crucial final wrap-up meeting, probably within the first two weeks of September. We understand that the steering committee is going ahead with the initial planning of the meeting, despite there being no real agreement on whether there is a need for such a meeting. At the planning meeting, the attendees will have to come up with an agenda to present to the government for forming the non-profit entity to take control of the DNS that was called for in the government’s white paper of June 5. However, many are keen that the IFWP should not be seen as the only game in town, or as a traveling road-show, as one internet veteran put it. David Maher, chair of the Policy Oversight Committee (POC) that oversees the Council of Registrars (CORE), a group of 80 or so domain name registrars hoping to register names in seven new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) they have proposed, said the basis of any solution should be the draft drawn up by Jon Postel, the director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which was published last week and heavily touted by its supporters at the Geneva IFWP meeting. Maher said his fear was of having a large group of lawyers in a room at the final meeting trying to thrash out the structure of the proposed non-profit entity – Maher is a lawyer himself – which he says is not the point the for which the community should be aiming.
