The draft report makes welcome progress, but still puts lots of hurdles in the way of new top-level domains.

Since the individual Internet user (as putatively represented by the At-Large Advisory Committee) is not in a GNSO constituency, I've been getting up to ask lots of questions. As a general matter, I think ICANN should stay as far from the semantics of domain name strings as possible. Once ICANN sets itself up as arbiter of strings' "public policy" or "morality," it seems to me it's just inviting hold-up to the application process.

Remote Participation: Kieren McCarthy has set up an ICANN aggregate webspace at http://sp.icann.org/; there's IRC chat at irc.freenode.net#icann ; and webcasts are linked (schedule); ICANN page.

Next up, WHOIS.