The Board Review Working Group (BRWG), in its final report [PDF, 116 KB], recommended that the current timing of appointments to the Board be altered so that all incoming Board members are sat at an ICANN Public Meeting. Currently, only Board members appointed by the Nominating Committee are seated at a Public Meeting.

Abstract: The emergence of a new international regime that is being organized around ICANN is traced; the regime has developed in response to the commercialization of the Internet and to the global debate over the management of domain names.The property rights conflicts that arose following the growth of domain names are considered and a property regime (”draft-postel”) is proposed as an efficient response to commercialization of name space.The contrast between the proposed regime and the current regime reveals the degree to which conflicts intrinsic to the definition of property rights impede institutional change. To download this paper by Milton Mueller published in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership Historical Research Reference in Entrepreneurship, see: ssrn.com/abstract=1512337

ICANN is today opening a public comment period on a proposed amendment from Telnic Ltd. to Appendices 6 and S of the .TEL Registry Agreement . On 8 October 2010, ICANN posted for public information a request (proposal #2010012) submitted by Telnic through the Registry Services Evaluation Process (RSEP) to allow the allocation of numeric-only domains in .TEL, with the exception of single-digit names

ICANN and UNESCO have agreed to work together to further strengthen and promote multilingualism in cyberspace, and facilitate the successful implementation of IDN ccTLDs.

ICANN is today opening a public comment period on a proposed amendment from VeriSign Information Services, Inc. to Appendices 6 and 11 of the .NAME Registry Agreement .

ICANN will be holding a third consultation on the new gTLD registry agreement issues at 18:30 UTC on 8 September. On the ICANN Blog, Craig Schwartz writes that “ICANN has consulted with an open drafting consultation group on several issues relating to implementation of the new gTLD program. Earlier this year the “Temporary Drafting Group” group met twice to discuss the Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Process and the process for future amendments to the registry agreement for new gTLDs

ICANN has published a revised proposed registry agreement with ICM, the controversial applicant for the .XXX Sponsored Top Level Domain (.XXX sTLD) as well as documentation submitted by ICM Registry in connection with the expedited due diligence conducted at the direction of the Board are being posting today for public comment. There is a 30 day public comment period that closes on 24 August. The .XXX sTLD has been kicking around since 2004 when ICM submitted an application in response to an ICANN Request for Proposals to create new sTLD registries

On 27 August 2009 , the Board approved in principle the recommendation of the Board review Working Group (BRWG) to add one voting director from the At-Large Community to the ICANN Board of Directors and removing the present At-Large Advisory Committee Liaison to the ICANN Board. The BRWG issued its final report [PDF, 116 KB] in February 2010, and noted the expectation that “the selection process will be designed, approved and implemented in time for the new Director to be seated at the 2010 Annual General Meeting.” The Board’s Structural Improvements Committee (SIC) is charged with providing a set of suggested actions to address this recommendation. As part of the SIC’s work, in consultation with the Board Governance Committee, the SIC agreed that the term of the Board Director selected by the At-Large Community should coincide with the terms of the Board Directors selected by the Sponsoring Organizations, so as to allow the Nominating Committee to consider the full composition of the non-Nominating Committee-appointed Board membership when making its appointments

ICANN is today opening a public comment period on a proposed amendment from EmployMedia LLC to Appendix S of the .JOBS Registry Agreement On 9 June 2010, ICANN posted for public information a request submitted by EmployMedia through the Registry Services Evaluation Process to offer a phased allocation program.

[news release] Following a previous public consultation regarding additional search functionality for .nz domain names, it has been agreed by the DNCL Board that limited searches by registrant name should be permitted. Searches by registrant name will be restricted to: Searches by registrants seeking a list of their own .nz domain names ; and Searches that have the sole purpose of supporting a Dispute Resolution Service complaint. To allow such searches to be introduced, the current WHOIS policy needs to be reviewed