More details on the Tuvalu-VeriSign deal

VeriSign offered Tuvalu an extra $1 million a year in exchange for the continuing right to run .tv, but the tiny island nation declined, according to a new interview.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a short audio piece over here on the strained relationship between VeriSign and Tuvalu, including an interview with finance minister Lotoala Metia.

Tuvalu gets about $2.2 million a year from VeriSign, according to the piece, but the government thinks it’s being short-changed.

VeriSign offered the country another $1 million a year, on the condition that the deal would be extended for five more years. It currently expires in 2016. Tuvalu declined.

The company declined to comment to ABC, but AusRegistry chief Adrian Kinderis stepped up to defend the deal, pointing out that VeriSign took all the risk.

Kinderis also accepted the interviewer’s suggestion that the new TLD round could leave .tv “obsolete”.

Here’s a link to the stream.

ICANN accused of Twitter faux pas over Arabic domains

The registry behind one of the new Arabic-script ccTLDs has sharply criticised ICANN for the way it introduced internationalized domain names to the root this week.

Adrian Kinderis, CEO of AusRegistry, accused ICANN, specifically those responsible for the IANA function, of “embarrassing incompetency” and cultural insensitivity.

Kinderis’ beef is that IANA added the three new Arabic IDNs to the root without giving their local managers so much as a headsup.

AusRegistry is the back-end provider for امارات. the United Arab Emirates’ new IDN ccTLD, as well as its ASCII original.

“I was alarmed to discover that the relevant ccTLD Managers were only notified many hours after the fact, long after the same IANA staff member had broadcast the news on a personal Twitter account,” he blogged.

While Kinderis was diplomatic enough not to name names, he’s talking about IANA registry manager Kim Davies, who broke the web-changing news on Wednesday with a tweet.

“This was an inappropriate manner in which to announce an event of this importance,” Kinderis wrote. “It displays a disturbing lack of understanding and a complete disregard of the cultural and political significance of this event within the Arabic world.”

He goes on to point out that the announcement was made during Saudi Arabia’s weekend, leaving ccTLD managers scrambling to get their marketing in place on their day off.

I could keep quoting. It’s a fairly extraordinary attack on aspects of ICANN’s culture. Go have a read.