On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Walubengo J <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:

Alice, McTim et al.

Plse bring us upto speed on the what is the beef here.

The beef here is about who gets the final say about what goes in the rootzone. That responsibility lies with ICANN and its constituent Supporting Organisations, but ultimately with the Board of Trustees of ICANN. Many in the GAC think they should have veto power of the BoT, and some think they already do have this power.

My recollection is that the .xxx top level domain (for Pornographic content) was previously vetoed by the Bush (Jnr) government(?)

not the case. An earlier ICANN Board approved .xxx. Later, the GAC asked for a delay and ultimately sought to overturn this earlier Board decision (lots of pressure by the Bushies here, yes) and the issue went to binding arbitration. ICANN was told by the arbitration that they had to allow .xxx, and so they did, eventually despite the GAC not being able to articulate what they wanted in a timely manner.

but somewhat the Obama administration seems to have favored it

also not correct, the DoC of the Obama admin has made lots of noises against .xxx.

and by extension ICANN - has finally and procedurally filled the intention to implement it (?).

.xxx is in the rootzone and hence live on the internet.

So what's with the EU request to delay the implementation?

Well it is too late for that. Politics I guess??

Is it that the EU is now backtracking on the .xxx domain?

I think they have had reservations about it all along, so no, not backtracking. Just trying to assert authority they don't have, and that they KNOW the US won't exercise (and they have said in the past that they don't want the US to exercise it).

And I wonder what is the general "African" position (if there ever was one) on this whole issue?

I imagine most GAC folks from Africa would be against it.

IIRC, there are several on this list, perhaps they can speak up?