Disclosure within ICANN

The US government requires lobbying efforts to be documented, figures of dollars spent per industry are broken down by sector. This is because of the right of people to know who is spending what when policy is being made.

Domain name law, such as it is, is being written as we watch. A large number of people are spending a lot of money to do this. Marilyn Cade spoke and wasn't exactly forthright that she represented the intellectual property interests of AT&T in the domain name industry or that AT&T was the #1 "heavy hitter" for lobbying the government, something Marilyn has done since 1996. And it's no coincidence the Department of Commerce that oversees ICANN is the fourth most lobbied agency in the US government.

The amount the trademark lobby spend on preventing new TLDs since 1996 is staggering. IBM admitted to spending $30M/yr in 1998 and 1999 but we have no other figures.

There is not now, full disclosure of lobbying efforts on behalf of the trademark lobby Or known how much big business spending this year to lobby against the creation of new top level domains.

Question part 1: Is full disclosure of lobbying not consistent with ICANN's "open and transparent" US Government mandate?

Question part 2: Would anybody care to estimate what they think this figure might be this year lobbying ICANN and what has WIPO spent doing this since the 1995 OECD meeting where they first publically ventured into this issue? Can these figures be published sometime before the end of this quarter for both WIPO and the business community as a intrest group in this consultation under this current monopoly procedure that could create thousands of jobs?