[Chapter-delegates] ICANN Day 2

[Franck Martin]

I mostly attended the GAC meeting on Sunday. The main part of the
discussion is the way forward for the GAC. Mainly the running of the GAC
secretariat by the European Union terminates in June. India has offered
to fund and host the secretariat and ICANN has also offered to fund the
secretariat. The main argument is to decide if the funding from ICANN
should be accepted as it can be seen as “the industry funding its
regulator”, which could be a conflict of interest. There are a range of
views on this one, from Brazil caring a lot about this issue to USA not
caring while Singapore and UK have a middle ground. It is to be noted
that ICANN has in the past funded GAC by paying rooms and other services
for the GAC to be able to meet during ICANN meetings. The result of the
discussion, it seems that GAC needs more money to ensure work beyond the
basic support. Brazil will fund the GAC secretariat to travel to Sao
Paulo to attend the ICANN/GAC meeting there. It was suggested that the
host country should fund the secretariat each time, however it may
discourage developing countries to bid for hosting ICANN.

More Pacific Islands delegates arrived today and we had a nice after
hour party at the Brewery but before most of them enjoyed a luncheon
with the ICANN board. It was the occasion for the new comers to meet
people and do the Japanese handshake.

Also it seems that Verisign is inviting its registrar to Fiji for a
little bit of leisure time after the ICANN meeting. So ICANN Wellington
is indeed benefiting the Pacific Islands Tourism. I think this area
escaped us, for the Pacific Islands Tourism to have a booth here at the
conference. Next time...

-- 
Franck Martin
ICT Specialist
franck at sopac.org
SOPAC, Fiji
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"Toute connaissance est une reponse a une question" G.Bachelard