ICANN announced the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, Inc. (FIRST) Friday last. The MoU aims to strengthen the relationship between ICANN and FIRST and enhance its collaborative efforts to support a safer, more secure, and resilient Domain Name System (DNS).
ICANN Tuesday announced the successful completion of String Evaluation of the proposed Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code top-level domain (ccTLD) string for Israel.
In this episode of Radio Corona, Gideon Lichfield, editor in chief of MIT Technology Review, will discuss the future of our connected world with Vint Cerf, one of the people known as a “father of the internet.”
ICANN is inviting the community to join the ICANN Board for its upcoming Special Board Meeting on 7 May 2020 from 18:30-19:30 UTC. This meeting will be directly followed by an informational webinar regarding the Board’s Fiscal Year 2020 operational priorities. The Board meeting agenda can be found here.
Registrations are now open for the ICANN68 Policy Forum scheduled for 22-25 June 2020. Originally to be held physically in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic it has now been held as a virtual meeting instead.
Continue reading Registrations Now Open For Virtual ICANN68 In JuneICANN Thursday announced that its affiliate, Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), invites the community to engage with Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) staff and members of the PTI Board to discuss the development of its first comprehensive strategic plan.
Continue reading ICANN: Webinar Invitation: PTI FY21-FY24 Strategic PlanICANN announced Monday that it will hold two public webinars to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its current and planned work. ICANN org has recently developed new projections in ICANN’s Revised Draft FY21-25 Operating and Financial Plan and Revised Draft FY21 Operating Plan and Budget, which will be presented during the webinars for information and discussion and will be proposed for adoption by the ICANN Board in early May.
Please join one of the two scheduled informational webinars on 28 April 2020 to learn more about the impact of COVID-19 on ICANN’s planned work as detailed in the Revised Draft FY21-25 Operating and Financial Plan and Revised Draft FY21 Operating Plan and Budget. ICANN welcomes the community’s questions and comments.
28 April 2020
ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.
This ICANN announcement was sourced from: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2020-04-20-en
Purpose: This is a draft of PTI’s first Strategic Plan for community review and input prior to finalization and adoption by the PTI Board of Directors. The plan defines PTI’s strategy in delivering the IANA functions and represents a subset of the ICANN organization’s strategy.
Current Status: The PTI Board has developed this draft with IANA staff and the broader ICANN org, proposed to cover the fiscal years 2021 through 2024.
Next Steps: During the Public Comment proceeding, PTI will hold community webinars on the topic. Once the Public Comment proceeding closes, PTI will consolidate the feedback, publish a summary report, and the feedback will be incorporated into the finalization of the strategic plan.
This is the first dedicated Strategic Plan for Public Technical Identifiers (PTI). PTI as an organization was constituted in 2016, the result of the IANA Stewardship Transition that created a new not-for-profit organization to operate the IANA functions under contract with ICANN. Prior to this, ICANN had operated those functions directly. The IANA Stewardship Transition created and ratified a transition plan that includes deliverables and associated milestones, and that transition plan acted as the interim strategy for PTI in its first years of operation. To align with ICANN’s new Strategic Plan beginning FY21, PTI plans to adopt this plan for the period FY21-24.
The PTI Bylaws mandate the development of a four-year strategic plan that outlines the Corporation’s strategic priorities. Prior to adopting the plan, the bylaws state that PTI shall consult with the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, as well as the Registries Stakeholder Group, IAB and RIRs in the development and updating of the Strategic Plan. The plan shall also be subject to public comment prior to approval by the PTI Board. Upon approving the plan, the PTI Board shall submit it to the ICANN Board. The plan shall be reviewed on a yearly basis and the Corporation’s actual performance shall be measured against the Strategic Plan and reported to the PTI Board.
This ICANN announcement was sourced from: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/draft-pti-fy21-24-strategic-plan-2020-04-20-en
Registrants of domain names in gTLDs have been given relief by ICANN should they be facing hardship resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes concerns about the ability of registrants to renew their domain names in a timely manner given current circumstances.
To ease the burden, ICANN announced in a blog post last week they will be invoking section 3.7.5.1 of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement for the second time. This clause permits registrars to temporarily forebear from cancelling domain name registrations that were unable to be renewed as a result of a natural disaster.
The post by Russ Weinstein, Senior Director, gTLD Accounts and Services, notes “the COVID-19 pandemic once again highlights the potential need for a policy initiative to protect registrants when they are unable to renew their domains as a result of natural disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. In the interim, we encourage contracted parties to take these circumstances into consideration when reviewing renewal delinquencies.”
Coronavirus knocked down — at least for a time — Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, who offers this reflection on the experience: “I don’t recommend it … It’s very debilitating.”
Cerf, 76 and now recovering in his Northern Virginia home, has better news to report about the computer network he and others spent much of their lives creating. Despite some problems, the Internet overall is handling unprecedented surges of demand as it keeps a fractured world connected at a time of global catastrophe.
“This basic architecture is 50 years old, and everyone is online,” Cerf noted in a video interview over Google Hangouts, with a mix of triumph and wonder in his voice. “And the thing is not collapsing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/06/your-internet-is-working-thank-these-cold-war-era-pioneers-who-designed-it-handle-almost-anything/