After I wrote yesterday's post, I went up and moderated a two-hour workshop on "protection of registrants."  Transcript here, agenda here.  The idea behind the workshop was to make sure ICANN is making the right kind of progress in dealing with failing registrars and registries.  We've got a Registrar Accreditation Agreement that doesn't allow for sanctions other than cutting off an accreditation entirely - which is a pretty blunt instrument that ICANN doesn't use.  And it has a data escrow provision that hasn't been enforced (although some registrars have been doing escrow on their own).

A key problem is communication.  Registering a domain name can still be confusing for end-users, although some registrars make an effort to explain what's going on.  It can be hard to tell who you're dealing with or what will happen if you don't pay on time.  ICANN and its many parts (and its millions) could do a lot more to ensure that various actors make clear what the different roles are and what registrants should watch out for.

I was also part of a workshop on changes to the Generic Names Supporting Organization structure (agenda).  I'm a member of a working group drafting suggestions for consideration by the Board.  I think we made some progress during the workshop, but re-structuring something that is under way and working very hard to make policy is tricky.  One of my goals is to just make clear (communication again) what each "level" (working group to council to board) is supposed to be doing, what questions they're supposed to be answering, and who has discretion to do what.  I'm hopeful this kind of information will emerge from the process we're working on now.

Between those two workshops was a third, focusing on new generic top-level-domains.  This is a subject I care about a great deal, and the portion of the discussion I heard was very lively.  When the transcript is available I'll post some portions here.

So yesterday was a big day, and today is bigger - we will visit several constituencies, have more committee meetings, and keep going all day.  There are things happening here that will provide lots of fodder for academic papers and work for lawyers - for years.