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ICANN turns 20 today (or maybe not)

Kevin Murphy, September 18, 2018, Domain Policy

ICANN is expected to celebrate its 20th anniversary at its Barcelona meeting next month, but by some measures it has already had its birthday.
If you ask Wikipedia, it asserts that ICANN was “created” on September 18, 1998, 20 years ago today.
But that claim, which has been on Wikipedia since 2003, is unsourced and probably incorrect.
While it’s been repeated elsewhere online for the last 15 years, I’ve been unable to figure out why September 18 has any significance to ICANN’s formation.
I think it’s probably the wrong date.
It seems that September 16, 1998 was the day that IANA’s Jon Postel and Network Solutions jointly published the organization’s original bylaws and articles of incorporation, and first unveiled the name “ICANN”.
That’s according to my former colleague and spiritual predecessor Nick Patience (probably the most obsessive journalist following DNS politics in the pre-ICANN days), writing in now-defunct Computergram International on September 17, 1998.
The Computergram headline, helpfully for the purposes of the post you are reading, is “IANA & NSI PUBLISH PLAN FOR DNS ENTITY: ICANN IS BORN”.
Back then, before the invention of the paragraph and when ALL CAPS HEADLINES were considered acceptable, Computergram was published daily, so Patience undoubtedly wrote the story September 16, the same day the ICANN proposal was published.
A joint Postel/NetSol statement on the proposal was also published September 17.
The organization was not formally incorporated until September 30, which is probably a better candidate date for ICANN’s official birthday, archived records show.
Birthday meriments are expected to commence during ICANN 63, which runs from October 20 to 25. There’s probably free booze in it, for those on-site in Barcelona.
As an aside that amused me, the Computergram article notes that Jones Day lawyer Joe Sims very kindly provided Postel with his services during ICANN’s creation on a “pro bono basis”.
Jones Day has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of ICANN cash over the intervening two decades, billing over $8.7 million in fees in ICANN’s most recently reported tax year alone.

VeriSign announces bizarre ‘.com 25’ award winners

Kevin Murphy, May 26, 2010, Gossip

As part of its 25th anniversary of .com celebrations, VeriSign has today announced the 25 winners of its “.com 25” award.
The award was given to “the 25 people and/or companies whose inspiring contributions were fundamental in shaping the Internet and, thereby, our worlds”, VeriSign said.
The winners all seem to deserve the recognition, even if one of them, craigslist, is technically a .org.
But looking at the 75 nominees the judging panel had to choose from, I’m scratching my head on at least half a dozen of them.
What is Zappos? What does Pandora do? Why is Muhammad Yunus on the list? What on earth is TheKnot.com?
And where are Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris, who between them basically created the domain name system in the first place?
It’s a little disappointing that the only European with a gong appears to be web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. It’s even more disappointing that I can’t think of any other deserving Europeans.
The full list of winners can be found here.