The official opening ceremony of the 53rd ICANN meeting took place in the capital of Argentina Buenos Aires. Delegates from more than 100 countries of the world participate, including representatives of the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ.
In fact, the meeting has begun last weekend from the meetings of Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) and ICANN’s Board of Directors. It is clear from the course of these meetings that there is an acute issue, one of the most important of the whole event. It is the extension of the procedure of rapid blocking of domain names that violated Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) intellectual rights. It It is valid only for new gTLDs, however, at the insistence of ICANN it has been extended to the renewal of the contracts with ICANN and “old” domains .PRO, .CAT and .TRAVEL registries. Many representatives of the domain industry fear that URS will be extended to all domains, including .COM. At the moment .COM is regulated under Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy for domain names (UDRP).
Nevertheless, the key issue of all ICANN meetings lately is the transition of IANA functions to structures of Internet community from the US government. ICANN Board Chairman Steve Crocker talked about this problem during his speech at the opening ceremony. He started his speech with a risky joke. He announced that the problem of transition would be in the center of attention. After that an image of Caitlyn Jenner, a woman who have undergone a sex change operation and previously known as a male athlete Bruce Jenner, appeared on the screen. When he saw the image, Steve Crocker said: “No-no, I meant something else”. The audience laughed at the joke, however, judging by posts in Twitter not all of the participants thought is was harmless.
ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehade also made a speech at the ceremony. He focused on the main tasks of ICANN – improving the performance of the corporation, strengthening its communication with technical community and expanding ICANN cooperation with all interested parties of the Internet community all over the world.
The day before Fadi Chehade addressed members of GNSO. It is well known that ICANN President has announced his retirement and will leave his post in March next year. In his speech he frankly talked about the work done, the mistakes as well. Chehade also expressed hope that his successor would be a person from ICANN that knows how the corporation works well.
