South Africa is the chosen place to do the last 2004 year meeting. The atmosphere of Cape Town, with 735 shares, was more a less nice, even the problems that flurried the Internet Community since some months ago until now, don’t seem to be solved.

The ccTLDs representatives were joint one time into two separated sessions: the ccNSO – the organization that, from this moment, is integrated into the Administration Counsel of ICANN – in every moment rejected for the majority of European ccTLDs ( .Fr, .De and .UK particularly) but things could evolve with the inclusion of the European Registries Counsel (CENTR) as an observer member. Even when, according with the first report published by the CENTR depending on the Cape Town meeting is still a long way to go on! An interesting decision establishes, from now, the organization of united sessions between the ccNSO and the GAC, the Government voice inside ICANN. The first task of this group will be, without doubt, to evaluate the “new principles” of GAC. They establish, between others, the norms under which a country code is assigned and is attributed to a Government or, more disturbing for the present Registries in activity, like the ccTLD that will be “re-leaded” to another organization in case of a serious problem with the present Registry.

If the role of the Governments seems each time more important inside the ICANN, it is because this is the exact case! An ICANN representative declared that even the last report from the International Union of Telecommunications showed “a remarkable interest on the topics that have an affect on the ICANN” and appeals “to the ccTLDs experience in order to convince their Governments on the efficiency of the work done”. Clearly this is to preserve the status quo! In the mean time, the preparation for the World Summit of International Society (SMSI) goes on with another meeting on “Internet Government” that was done in the last day of the meeting in Cape Town. They talked a lot about countries in the process of development and the place for African countries in this debate in order to reduce the “numerical breaking”, real problems from which the ICANN seems to be more and more far, in each meeting.

See www.ICANN.org

JCV & SB