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<p>Dear Joly, <br>
</p>
<p>I hope all is well. I am left strangely untouched by the
eloquence of public relations team of PIR and Ethos. As many have
said before me, the "safeguards" that Ethos is promising with its
Stewardship team are merely words. A Stewardship Council sounds
like a lovely idea, but what *obligations* is there for Ethos
private equity firm to pay any attention to it? Also doesn't
Ethos appoint its members? <br>
</p>
<p>What really surprises me before is the assertion that "PIR had a
tremendous Advisory Council." While the people on PIR's Advisory
Council may have been tremendous, Brian Cimbolic's wording implies
that somehow the work of the PIR Advisory Council has been
tremendously influential. The current PIR Advisory Council, we
are told, *was not even told of the change of control* or asked
what this would mean for the community of noncommercial
registrants they are supposed to represent? If the Council is so
important, how could it be overlooked for input? The fact is that
advisory councils -- whatever their names -- are purely advisory.
<br>
</p>
<p>Because overall, PIR is run by its Board of Directors, appointed
by ISOC, and Ethos Capital will be run by its owners, whose names
have been redacted in recent ICANN materials. (We don't even know
who will be running Ethos.) Whatever they decide makes them the
most money is how "Ethos" will operate. If Ethos and PIR are
changing this fundamental operation of American capitalism and
allowing "advisory councils" to dictate real policies, I'll be
shocked, but at the least, they must make their words binding
--not mere words on a page.</p>
<p>Best, Kathy</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">1/20/2020 4:36 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAM9VJk2E7nJ8jBaUgeLRMwtdECD6ATKeX7d_Dju_UfzGh=aOqw@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I'm
interested to know what more community commitments , in
reality, CCOR, or even ISOC,
can be expected to make beyond those outlined in the the <a
href="https://isoc.live/pir/2019-12-19_PIR_Stewardship_Community_Webinar.pdf"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Ethos/PIR Stewardship
Community Webinar</a>. </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Here is an
excerpt:</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><i><b>Brian
Cimbolic</b> I briefly touched on the safeguards that we
are going to be putting in place, to ensure that we
continue as an exemplary registry. The Stewardship Council
is one of those safeguards. Previously, PIR had a
tremendous Advisory Council. They're dedicated people,
from around the world, that provided informal advice to
PIR staff that we often incorporated into what we do, into
our mission, and we appreciated that advice tremendously.
At the end of the day, though, it was a body that advised
PIR staff. It was not a public facing body that had any
sort of reports coming out of it, as to the activity
activities of the council,. It fed directly into PIR. What
the Stewardship Council does, is take that notion and
elevate it significantly. It will be transparent, an
independent body comprised of members from the .ORG
community. It's meant to serve as a cross section of the
.ORG community, from nonprofits, CSR, those that seek to
do good around the world. through .ORG. That's the idea of
the Stewardship Council, and who they will be. What
they'll do is, they're focused on balancing the interests
of all .ORG stakeholders,, those .ORG registrants, donors,
shareholders, PIR employees. The Stewardship Council is
really meant to serve as a bridge across all of those
interests , and really strike the balance in its advice,
that it provides to PIR. We anticipate that the Council
should be up and running within 90 days of closing. The
Stewardship Council has three main roles. I'll expand on
each of these briefly. It will provide direct oversight to
safeguard the interests of the .ORG community. It's going
to provide advice, and strategic recommendations, to the
PIR board, and issue periodic reports. PIR, as I mentioned
previously, we already do transparency reporting on our
anti-abuse efforts. We also issue annual reports. The
Stewardship Council will continue in that tradition, but
also elevate both the ways that we report the information,
and what we're reporting. What makes this Stewardship
Council different, from many advisory bodies, is it has
direct power over a number of some pretty core elements of
PIR, moving forward. It provides direct oversight, to
safeguard the interests of the .ORG community, in a number
of ways. First and foremost, it will have the ultimate say
on the core values of PIR, how we conduct our business
here, how we conduct ourselves to the outside world, how
we serve as stewards to .ORG. It ultimately has that
authority over PIR. Secondly, it will ratify policies on
safeguards against censorship, of free expression, in the
.ORG domain space. This is really key. At PIR, we are not
Internet censors. We don't ever want to be, and we won't.
The Stewardship Council will ultimately have to ratify
these policies on censorship, and free expression, and we
as a company will follow them. So, the Stewardship Council
will ultimately serve as a very prominent safeguard, with
transparent outputs that the community can digest, and
recognize that PIR will not serve as Internet censors.
They are a virtual guardrail to ensure that that does not
happen. Finally, the council will make and manage grants
on behalf of the Community Enablement Fund. This is one
I'm personally very excited about. We can innovate, and
invest back into the .ORG communities, in ways that we
couldn't previously. This is a prime example. The
Stewardship Council will oversee donations that come from
the Community Enablement Fund, moving forward. Those are
the oversight functions. The Stewardship Council also has
some critically important advisory functions. First, and
foremost, it's going to provide strategic advice on the
balance and priorities for the various stakeholders in <a
href="http://the.org/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">the.org</a> community. The
Stewardship Council will help strike that balance, and
provide strategic advice on what that balance should be. </i></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><i><br>
</i></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><i>Also,
something Nora mentioned, we are going to be forming a
Public Benefit LLC. Contained within the Certificate of
Formation will be a statement of public benefit. The
statement of public benefit will enshrine, in the
organizational documents, the price commitments that Erik
Brooks recently blogged about. That will be built in to
the organizational structure here. If we ever sought to
try and change that, it would require changing those
documents. Before that would happen, the Stewardship
Council would have to provide advice, in a transparent,
open, way on any proposed change like that. Finally, the
Stewardship Council will issue recommendations on a
product and service roadmap for the .ORG community. These
people are here for a reason. They're influencers
representing important parts of the .ORG community. Having
that sort of advice from them will be extremely valuable
in our products and services moving forward. </i></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><i><br>
</i></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><i> Mechanically,
talking about the Stewardship Council, it will meet at
least twice a year, and will have staggered overlapping
terms of up to three years. The nominating committee will
select the members of the Stewardship Council, once the
Stewardship Council is up and running. The initial slate
of stewards would be selected by the PIR board. One of the
first things that the Stewardship Council will do is to
create a nomination, or selection committee. That body, in
conjunction with the PIR board, would ultimately be the
entity that selects its own members. The Stewardship
Council will work on the basis of consensus. it would
receive reimbursement for its expenses, an honorarium
provided by PIR, but, ultimately, serving on the council
is intended to be the honor unto itself.</i></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><i><br>
</i></div>
joly</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 1:17
PM Mueller, Milton L <<a href="mailto:milton@gatech.edu"
moz-do-not-send="true">milton@gatech.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div lang="EN-US">
<div class="gmail-m_7677963129350130163WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">Thank
you, Martin, for hitting the nail on the head:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"> </span></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, unless we can oppose with
success, we need to know what are the rules that our
conflict will be ruled by. As I see, or best shot is
to use the leverage we have to “reasonable oppose” to
ask for modification in the agreement with ethos, so
we make sure .org stays for the community. In the end,
I don’t see ICAN legal going to court against ISOC,
Ethos and PIR in a million dollar conflict,
jeopardising the .org stability and the ripples it
would cause.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">If we are going to re open .org and
terminate ISOC, then we should do an open round, no
hand picking. And we should put all our concerns in
the agreement. </p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:rgb(31,73,125)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">+100</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Kathy Kleiman
President, Domain Name Rights Coalition
</pre>
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