Reprinted from the NCUC list: Association UNINETREF. ID. 10/2008 Dear Dr. Twomey and Mr. Thrush, We are a Bulgarian association representing part of the local Internetuser and business community, aimed at the introduction of BulgarianIDN domains. We would like to inform you that we have been denied participation inthe upcoming regional ccTLD meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria. (8 – 10September) (please see attached letter). The Russian organizers of themeeting held in Bulgaria explained to us that the reason is that our organization is neither a ccTLD registry nor a registrar. We would like to express our astonishment with this case, because wethought that all ICANN meetings are always open – we have participatedin former ICANN meetings, like in Los Angeles, without any problems and we will participate in Cairo again. We have understood that ICANN meetings and ICANN-supported meetings are open to all. We are aware at a similar regional meeting in the Middle East co-organized by ICANN together with a local ccTLD anyone was allowed to participate. Additionally, we are aware from the speaker and invitee lists of the event, a number of entities that do not qualify as neither a ccTLD registry or a registrar (for example Verisign, Affilias, ComTel, ENISA, etc.) are able to participate. We would like to ask you whether is an ICANN policy to organize also non-open meetings and deny participation of the local Internet community, considering that the meeting is held in Bulgaria. We believed that the ICANN meetings are supposed to be for the whole Internet community. If we are unable to get a response in a timely manner, because the meeting is next week, we will have little choice but to bring this up with the ICANN ombudsman and the wider ICANN community. Best regards, Iliya BazlyankovBoard chairman Association UNINET iliya@bg8.eu https://www.uninet.bg Phone: +359 2 942 98 00 Mobile: +359 89 999 16 90 Fax: +359 2 943 38 02