The third round meetings of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concluded in Carthage, Tunisia with Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) taking part in the Oct. 27-31 event.
AGIP Tunisia’s Office Manager Mr. Hazem Abu-Ghazaleh, Executive Director of the Regional Office in Amman, Mr. Charles Shaban and Domain Names Registration Officer Mahmoud Lattouf took part in the five-day meetings and covered different activities in the fields of IP Constituency, Business Constituency, Domain Names Registrars.
Participants from Latin and North Americas, Europe, Canada, the Far East, Australia and the Arab World tackled several topics related to domain names. One of the meetings concentrated on the VeriSign, which was dedicated to discuss VeriSign Wild Card Service new service, the “Sitefinder” and its effects on the stability of the Internet.
Furthermore, participants took part in a session that provided a brief overview of nameservers and the hierarchy of Domain Name System (DNS). The session enabled attendants to setup their own nameservers, and consequently reduce the costs of domain name registration in Saudi Arabia and in other countries.
In the WHOIS workshop, Mr. Shaban stated that each Arab ccTLD managers should know the problems and concerns and find the solutions before starting registering Arabic domain names.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lattouf pointed out that other issues raised during the meetings included, Sitefinder, IDN implementation and the Whois policy development while other sessions gave attention to further issues such as future registry services, transfers, deletes, Redemption grace period and ICANN fees.
A breakthrough decision by the Board of Directors was to open new domain names under TLDs and start receiving applications as of the middle of December 2003.
In addition to a change in the transition article to allow three representatives per constituency on the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) council until the end of the ICANN meeting in 2004; and to perform a review of the GNSO Council in or around July 2004 which should include among other aspects of the review criteria, an analysis of the efficacy of having three representatives from each constituency on the GNSO Council.
Meanwhile, the IDN Committee and the IDN Registry Implementation Committee have been annulled.
The next round will be held for the first time in Rome, Italy March 2-6, 2004
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a technical coordination body for the Internet. Created in October 1998 by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic, and user communities, ICANN is assuming responsibility for a set of technical functions previously performed under U.S. government contract by IANA and other groups