The US loves to talk about the value of multistakeholderism -- in fact today an announcement was posted on the NTIA website pointing to a joint statement on the part of US Ambassador David A. Gross and Assistant Secretary John M. R. Kneuer that extolled this value -- see http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/2007/IGF_110807.html ...however, actions speak louder than words. in the .us namespace we used to have a multistakeholder .us Policy Council; members included: Consumer Project on Technology American Library Association American Intellectual Property Law Association U.S. Chamber of Commerce registrar and registry representatives In the new contract just awarded to NeuStar to manage the .us space, the multistakeholder .us Policy Council has been replaced by a blog, a message board and an RSS feed. see http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/usca/usTLD2007_17_L_Outreach.pdf The contract was awarded without a public comment process, and the notion of multistakeholder policy development has been jettisoned in favor of single-stakeholder policy declarations, namely policy by US Government fiat. If the US really values the multi-stakeholder policy development process, then why aren't we seeing such being played out in the .us ccTLD? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com