[ncdnhc-discuss] Re: guidance on .org

[Milton Mueller]

Chris:
I wouldn't call what's going on with the
registrars "blackmail." That's not even 
close to my experience with them. 

I have problems with one or two, but 
that's because of certain personal qualities 
and political methods. Most registrars I have found 
to be extremely cooperative, and sensitive to our 
concerns. 

I still support an .org controlled
by the noncommercial community so that it
will be marketed in an appropriate
manner. The idea of exerting direct 
regulation over how 100+ registrars AND their
resellers operate seems increasingly like
a waste of time. That is, it would yield
little benefit at a great cost. 

The main problem with the way .org is 
promoted right now is that it's.....NOT
PROMOTED. The problem is not so much that
it is promoted in the wrong way. It's
just undifferentiated. 

A registry with some money to throw
around on promotion will do more to
affect the way registrars promote the
name than a bunch of regulations. 
Everybody will be better off if we do 
things via positive incentives rather than 
punishment. 

The message I'm getting is that we can
reconstruct the consensus for "sponsored
unrestricted" by using the "unsposnored,
unrestricted" model and making the newORG
sponsored in all but name: representative
of, responsive to, and supportive of the
noncommercial community.

One thing that amazes me about this 
whole process is how the delegation 
of TLDs seems to bring out the control
freak in all of us. 

The simple idea of relying on end user self-
selection was a strange and radical notion
within ICANN when I first broached it.
"What!" they said, "you mean users might
actually know where they belong without
us forcing tem into the right pigeonhole?" 
That says a lot about the ICANN "system."

But it seems to be making some headway.
We need to be careful that we don't turn
into control freaks, too.