Two of the presenters at The State of Play conference, demonstrating their wide-ranging interests, are finding trouble regarding ICANN.

Michael Froomkin is writing about the negotiations regarding the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) treaty, in particular, the issue of domain names on the internet (Domain Names and the FTAA: A Bad Mix). Some of the problems with the FTAA as regards intellectual property have been noted here previously (IP Justice on IP in the Free Trade Area of the Americas Treaty). Froomkin is rightly critical of the mandate that countries adopt the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) already used by ICANN for ".com" (among others) for use with regard to each countries' top level domain name, such as .ca for Canada. If you are interested in this issue, Froomkin's post is quite informative.

Susan Crawford post is bluntly entitled, Things are getting worse at ICANN. Crawford is rightly disparaging of ICANN's report that justifies a decision to amend contracts between ICANN and the registries: Staff Manager's Issue Report on the Need for a Predictable Procedure for Changes in the Operation of TLD Registries.