Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAGO) took part in the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meetings held in Rome March 1-6, 2004. TAGO was represented by Mr. Charles Shaban, the Executive Director of the Regional Office of Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP).
During the ICANN meetings, Mr. Shaban participated in a workshop which carried the theme "Workshop on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS): Issues of Relevance to ICANN and Next Steps", where he represented the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC), and discussed the IP community feedback regarding WSIS related issues.
Meanwhile, other speakers and panelists covered various sectors, such as business, registries, registrars, Internet service providers, Root Servers Advisory Committee, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the members At-Large. The ICANN chairman and CEO also participated in this workshop.
These ICANN meetings had the usual gatherings of the constituencies in different workshops, public forums and the Board meeting. The main subjects discussed were:
- The WSIS process on Internet Governance
- ccTLDs policies and the formation of the new ccNSO (country code
names supporting organization).
- Whois, with its different taskforces to discuss: Restricting access, data
collected and displayed and improving accuracy of the collected data.
- The process for gTLDs service changes
- Security related issue
- At-Large update
The ICANN board meeting approved several resolutions, one of the most important was the approval of the WLS (Waiting List Service), which allows the registry of the .com and .net TLDs to offer a new service that allows any user to put a specific registered domain name in a queue in case the original owner did not renew it in order to obtain it.
Some of the other resolutions were:
- Authorizing the ICANN president to negotiate new agreements for the
.net TLD.
- Appointment of a new Nominating Committee Chair
- Welcoming the new Country-Code Names Supporting Organization
(ccNSO).
TAGO's participation in ICANN started July 2000 and since then it has been active in all ICANN events, mainly in the Business Constituency (BC), Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) and Registrars.