It appears that face-to-face meeting of the type held last week in Geneva under the International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP) banner are proving more useful than hours spent exchanging ideas – and sometimes insults – on mailing lists. And despite little progress at last week’s meeting (see yesterday’s story), the chance for informal meetings on the side is proving more useful. Such a chance was apparently taken up by members of the Policy Oversight Committee (POC) that oversees the Council of Registrars (CORE). It is a group of 80-odd domain name registrars and two individuals interested in establishing their own registries that are waiting for their chance to register names in seven new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). One of the problems with CORE’s wish to introduce seven gTLDs is that one of them (.web) was claimed back in July 1996, before the establishment of CORE by a company called Image Online Design Inc and has been a source of bitter dispute between POC/CORE and IOD and its supporters ever since. In addition to representatives of the POC, the meeting also included one of the founders of IOD, Christopher Ambler, as well as Jay Fenello, president of Iperdome Inc, who hopes to be running one of the registries when the dust settles on the current melee over administration of the DNS. The story we hear from sources is that after chewing the cud about general stuff, the group, which apparently was brought together by Pindar Wong, the founder of Hong Kong SuperNet and one of the organizers of the IFWP Asia meeting next month – started addressing the issues that divide them; including whether or not registries should be for- on not-for-profit and, more controversially still, what to do with .web. The meeting was held in the lobby of the conference center surrounded by a small crowd of curious onlookers. Sources tell us that the CORE/POC parties agreed in principle to back off from their insistence of making .web one of its non-profit registries (IOD got an assurance from the Internet Assigned Numbers authority in July 1996 that IOD had the right to register second- level domains in .web). If that is the case, that would be a major concession on the part of POC/CORE and a major victory for IOD. But David Maher, the chair of the POC said there was no agreement of any kind, which, while seeming pretty definitive, goes against everything else we have heard. Maher said POC’s position is that no gTLD can be the intellectual property of any company, individual or group and he said the question is whether IOD could be worked into a CORE-type arrangement, rather than POC/CORE giving up any claim to .web. Perhaps Maher could not say anything different because he cannot speak for the whole POC/CORE being, but there appears to be something afoot. The alternative – going to court to resolve it – is not very pleasant and also casts the internet community in a very bad light, something that both sides are acutely aware of, it seems. It appears bridges are at least being built between the two, no doubt realizing that the US government wants to see one unified approach before handing off control to an entity created by the internet community and if it presented with conflicting approaches it will sit the parties down in a room and not let them out until they have reached agreement. But it remains to be seen whether something concrete emerges. For what it’s worth, we think it will and it will come from the POC/CORE side.
