<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',Sans-Serif; font-size: 14px"><div>Hi James,</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I disagree, we have no legal autonomy, the only argument would be that we exist as an unincorporated association which can be argued either direction.</span></em></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">You can argue anything in either direction. That is true. That we are already an unincorporated association under §18305 of the California Corporations Code seems certain. The CCC defines an incorporated association as “unincorporated group of two or more persons joined by mutual consent for a common lawful purpose, whether organized for profit or not.". THe only question is whether we have locus in California so that state retains jurisdiction over the NCUC. You make a pretty persuasive case through your own argument relating to ICANN that it does. Jurisdiction may be argued, I'd need more details to form a definitive view, but we'd likely find a similar statute wherever we're found to exist.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial; font-size: 13px;">.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><em>Our bank account is held by Milton as an individual if I’m not mistaken </em></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I believe you are. I received reimbursement check a few months ago from the Non Commercial Users Constituency. Unless Milton changed his name to Mr. Constituency I'm pretty sure that's not an individual account.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><em>and is not registered to any legal entity (as you note one does not exist) we hold no rights under US law with regards to being a legal entity such as status with the IRS or similar.</em> </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">The NCUC has a federal taxpayer identification number. Our donors like those.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The status of hosting for our webservers is non-related to our legal status. We may act independently but we do not have any legal status outside of our role as a constituency of ICANN.</span></em></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Wrong. See above.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I'm not very good at explaining law to those who aren't lawyers. One of my failings in life. My apologies.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One area where we do seem to agree, James, is upon the desirability of filing the necessary paperwork to affirm our intention to be an unincorporated association. Perhaps we should focus on that and encourage the EC to consider doing so. There are a number of folks here, myself included, who could put together the paperwork in under an hour. I'd be happy to do so if asked by the EC.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sorry I need to disengage now due to Christmas travel. Happy holidays everyone.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Best,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ed</p>
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