Dear Netizen, While complex technical debates on DNS abuse and geopolitical data regulations continued to hum through the corridors of the FIBES Centre, the day was defined by a deeply poignant shift. The global internet governance community paused its intensive policy-drafting sessions to honor the profound personal legacies of two towering figures who left an indelible mark on the ecosystem: *Allen Barret and Arinola Akinyemi*. The day's proceedings underscored that behind ICANN’s complex architecture of acronyms and policies lies a tight-knit global family built on decades of shared public service. An Emotional Farewell: The ICANN Board Honors Barret. The morning plenary took a solemn and deeply moving turn as the ICANN Board convened a special session dedicated to celebrating the life, leadership, and enduring contributions of Barret. The focal point of the tribute was an emotional address by ICANN Board Member Tripti Sinha, whose heartfelt reflections visibly moved the packed auditorium. · *A Legacy of Quiet Strength:* Speaking on behalf of the Board, Tripti captured Barret’s unique ability to navigate high-stakes, polarized debates with remarkable grace, intellectual rigor, and an unwavering commitment to the public interest. She spoke not just of his technical and governance acumen, but of his profound kindness, mentorship, and the steady calm he brought to turbulent multi-stakeholder processes. · *A Community in Mourning:* The tribute brought a rare moment of collective vulnerability to the Policy Forum. Tears and prolonged standing ovations from delegates across the GNSO, GAC, and ALAC underscored how deeply Barret’s loss is felt across every operational pillar of ICANN. Remembering Arinola Akinyemi: Tributes Pour In Across the Sectors. As the day progressed, the spirit of remembrance carried into the afternoon sessions as multiple distinct community bodies came together to honor the late Arinola, a fierce advocate for digital inclusion, capacity building, and structural equity. The multi-faceted tribute highlighted her expansive reach across the diverse strata of internet governance: · *The Nominating Committee (NOMCOM):* Leadership from NOMCOM reflected on Arinola’s strategic vision and tireless dedication to identifying and nurturing the next generation of diverse internet leaders. Speakers emphasized her insistence on ensuring that leadership pools genuinely reflected the global and multifaceted nature of the internet user base. · *The Business Constituency (BC):* Representatives from the commercial sector honored Arinola as a brilliant bridge-builder. They noted her unique capacity to align commercial enterprise interests with social development goals, ensuring that small business ecosystems—particularly within underserved regions—had a clear voice in technical policy design. · *The ICANN Fellows:* Perhaps the most vibrant and emotionally raw tributes came from the ICANN Fellowship community. Past and present fellows shared moving testimonies of how Arinola personally championed their journeys, shattered structural barriers to entry, and transformed ICANN from an intimidating, labyrinthine institution into an accessible space for emerging professionals from the Global South. As the ICANN86 Policy Forum entered its penultimate day, the atmosphere inside the FIBES Centre shifted toward critical consensus-building. Wednesday’s sessions on Day Three were dominated by high-stakes cross-community dialogues and intense bilateral negotiations aimed at reconciling divergent paths for internet governance. With the policy forum designed to yield concrete frameworks rather than declarations, Day Three brought long-standing debates to a head. Here are the defining developments, structural negotiations, and programmatic updates from Day Three. *1. High-Stakes Bilaterals: GAC and ICANN Board Face Off on Next Round.* The marquee event of the morning was the high-visibility bilateral meeting between the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the ICANN Board. The discussion was marked by firm but diplomatic tension as government representatives sought hard, structural commitments. · *The Focal Point:* The GAC heavily pressed the Board on the operational execution of the *Applicant Support Program (ASP)* for the Next Round of New gTLDs, emphasizing that the August 12 application deadline leaves no room for administrative delays. · *The Demand for Accountability:* Government delegates emphasized that financial subsidization alone is insufficient to bridge the digital divide. They demanded clear metrics on how the Board intends to roll out real-time, localized legal and technical mentorship to underrepresented applicants—particularly community networks, indigenous groups, and small businesses in rural or underserved regions. · *The Board’s Stance:* The Board acknowledged the tight timeline and committed to ensuring that the newly launched TLD Application Management System (TAMS) remains stable, while promising to optimize the deployment of pro bono support networks during the final ten-week sprint. *2. Gridlock and Breakthroughs: Associated Domain Checks under PDP1.* Following two days of open confrontation, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) working sessions saw a push toward a compromise framework regarding the controversial *Associated Domain Checks* under the new DNS Abuse Policy Development Process (PDP1). · *The Shifting Consensus:* To bridge the divide between security advocates demanding account-wide crackdowns and registrars fearing unpredictable compliance liabilities, draft text emerged aimed at narrowing the operational scope. · *The Operational Safe Harbor:* Negotiators began defining strict criteria for what constitutes "reasonably available information." Rather than forcing registrars to perform blind, manual investigations across entire portfolios upon receiving a single abuse report, the emerging framework leans toward automated, trigger-based checks. Under this model, account-wide reviews would only be mandated if a domain hits specific, high-confidence behavioral thresholds (e.g., identical malicious nameserver usage or matching bulk registration timestamps). *3. Registration Data Access: Bridging the Gap via RDRS.* Data access and privacy took center stage as the SSAD (Standardized System for Access and Disclosure) Supplemental Recommendations Team presented its latest telemetry and findings from the *Registration Data Request System (RDRS)*. *The Core Operational Dilemma:* The data revealed a persistent challenge: while law enforcement and security researchers utilize the RDRS to request non-public WHOIS data to combat cybercrime, registrar disclosure rates vary significantly due to conflicting regional privacy laws, such as Europe's NIS2 framework. Day Three saw a cross-community push to formalize standard, predictable pathways within the RDRS to reduce request processing times while maintaining strict legal compliance. *4. End-User Advocacy: ALAC Champions Structural Inclusivity.* The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) maintained a heavy operational cadence, holding vital regional updates and cross-community interventions that tied back to the core principles of digital equity. · *Universal Acceptance (UA) Readiness:* ALAC members engaged directly with technical working groups to evaluate the readiness of global email software providers to support Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). · *Targeting the Usage Gap:* In its sessions, ALAC stressed that the core infrastructure of the root zone must adapt to localized, non-ASCII scripts. Committee members argued that true digital inclusion means ensuring that a user typing entirely in a regional or indigenous language encounters zero structural errors from the browser down to the mail server. *Looking Ahead to Day Four: The Final Wrap-Up.* As ICANN86 heads into its final half-day today, Thursday, June 11, the community is racing against the clock to finalize its policy outputs. Expect final statements from the GAC, structural wrap-ups within the ccNSO and GNSO, and a formal cross-community closing session that will summarize the operational mandates coming out of Seville as the community prepares for the critical August gTLD deadline and the October DNSSEC Root Key Rollover.