The ICANN Board has voted to kill the .xxx registry.
It was inevitable I suppose. The political pressure was intense. Most of it coming from the US administration. You only have to look at the campaign in the US against it – ICANN's public comment board has been flooded with people saying it should not be approved.
The whole thing stinks though. I have been following this carefully for more than a year now. And I remember my first interview with Stuart Lawley in Luxembourg in July 2005. I gave him a really hard time and was amazed when he outlined exactly how the .xxx registry would work and what safety mechanisms he had put in place.
Since then there has been the most extraordinary backroom dealing. The registry was effectively approved over six months but there has been fake delay after fake delay.
But what sticks in my throat – yet again – is that the US government has made ICANN do what it wants by talking to Vint Cerf in secret. And then all sides have denied it. I'm sick of the pretence that the US government has a hands-off role.
I also don't think for one second that a small group of American right-wing Christians should be able to dictate what happens on the Internet. But that is the flaw in the current system. And because everyone is trying to keep the whole power issue under wraps for diplomatic reasons, these abuses, shortcuts to power and disproportionate decisions are able to continue.
And I note that yet again the ICANN Board has split with the old guard and the new people: 9-5, just like the dotcom contract. And just like the dotcom contract, ICANN has stuck a 48 hour gagging order on them to keep news of the troubles within ICANN out of the newspapers.
I wait to see what Susan Crawford and Veni Markovski have to say.
I've done a story for The Register on the whole saga. There is a Paul Twomey press conference this evening at 10pm. And an official ICANN statement about what its reasoning is should be due soon.
