[ga] Open Letter on ICANN Non-Openness

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

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@xxxxxx
https://www.uninet.bg
Phone: +359 2 942 98 00
Mobile: +359 89 999 16 90
Fax: +359 2 943 38 02