[ncdnhc-discuss] IMPORTANT: Need guidance from you regarding .org

[Milton Mueller]

At today's Names Council meeting, the Council delayed 
adopting a .org policy statement for two reasons:

1) Commercial registrars are concerned about a sponsored
TLD with control over registrar qualification and marketing
practices;

2) ICANN management (which formally has no policy
making role) believes that the concept of a "sponsored, 
unrestricted domain" does not fit into its pre-defined
contracts, which divides the world into "sponsored"
and "unsponsored" domains. So they have promoted
the (false) idea that the idea "cannot be executed." 
Unfortunately, ICANN as an institution is still so 
undeveloped that elected Names Councillors and
even Board members are likely to defer to unelected 
and unaccountable management.

These two problems play into each other; i.e., those
who want to change the consensus policy have 
seized on ICANN management's objection to use it 
as an excuse to start over.

In the next month, some important decisions will have
to be made about how to modify the .org policy to get
it through. I will now try to define those issues to
seek your advice.

There seems to be strong consensus on the
following points:

1. The governing body for newORG should be
a non-profit that is broadly representative of
the noncommercial community

2. ORG should remain open, and no current
registrant should be evicted.

3. ORG should be marketed in a way that 
differentiates and enhances its unique identity,
not sold as a clone of .com

Points that command majority, but less 
unanimous support, include:

4. ORG should follow standard ICANN UDRP
and WHOIS policies (insisted on by IPCC, B&C;
NCDNHC, GA not happy)

5. ORG should be able to qualify registrars
or otherwise contractually constrain their
marketing practices in the sale of ORG names
(opposed by registrars, favored by IPCC, GA
and NCDNHC). 

The most important disagreement is #5. 

We could avoid a lot of debate if we were willing
to allow any registrar to register names in .org and
not try to regulate how they market it. In that case
the policy could be changed to treat ORG as an
unsponsored, unrestricted domain and we could
retain all the other points 1-4.

Tell me what you think. 

Cheers,
MM