[ncdnhc-discuss] About Marketing Practices in .ORG

[Chris Bailey]

At 12:01 30/12/2001 +0900, you wrote:
>Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 22:29:08 -0500
>From: "Milton Mueller" <mueller at syr.edu>
>To: <chrisbailey at gn.apc.org>
>Cc: <discuss at icann-ncc.org>
>Subject: Re: [ncdnhc-discuss] About Marketing Practices in .ORG
>
>You already know the answer to that question.
>But if you actually read the draft, please
>identify any relevant difference in the policies
>the two drafts would be likely to achieve.
>Let's not get hung up on the words. (Leave that
>to Mr. Touton.)
>
> >>> Chris Bailey <chrisbailey at gn.apc.org> 12/28/01
>
>So how come you have now put forward a draft to the TF for an unsponsored 
>.org.

OK. Let's rephrase the question. Why have you put forward a draft to the TF 
*before* presenting it here?

I recognise you have tried to make a draft that, in effect, comes close to 
making .org sponsored while technically not being sponsored, but we had the 
right to consider the adequacy of your efforts before you submitted them to 
the TF. Indeed, we had the right to consider whether you should submit a 
new draft at all. My personal view, as I have made clear, is that we should 
take Mr Touton on head on, for the sake of defending the principle of 
"bottom-up" consensus that ICANN pretends to represent.

On one at least one central question your attempt to create a sponsored 
.org through sleight of hand rather than us taking on Mr Touton falls far 
short - the question of a measure of control over registrars. For a number 
of us this is a vital question. Four members of this constituency, myself 
(Association for Progressive Communications), Manon Ress (Essential 
Information), Rick Weingarten, (American Library Association), Adam Peake 
(GLOCOM Tokyo), plus Duncan Pruett (International Confederation of Free 
Trade Unions) submitted a statement to the public comment to that effect. 
We did so at *your* behest.

As was clearly expressed here at the time, there were two key issues behind 
our concern to have some control over the registrars. One concerned the 
need to involve the registrars in the marketing and image making of .org. 
The other concerned the possibility of diverting some of the profits from 
.org into use for non-commercial Internet purposes, particularly on digital 
divide issues. After all, if .org is to represent a non-commercial domain 
space then why shouldn't the profits from it go to non-commercial use 
rather than lining the pockets of commercial interests.

*Both* these principles have now been established in the .coop Registrar 
Agreement. As a matter of fact, they are there because some of us fought 
for them with regard to .org and the sponsors of .coop decided to take them 
up as well. But while they have succeeded, under very difficult 
circumstances actually (and with some problems dealing with a certain Mr 
Touton), in establishing these principles for .coop you have decided 
unilaterally to abandon this issue that some of us made very clear we 
regarded as vital.

What we now have regarding the possibility of producing any *financial 
resources* from .org for the non-commercial Internet sector is only:

 >2c. Support for noncommercial participants
 >Applicants should propose methods of supporting and
 >assisting non-commercial participants in the ICANN
 >process.

But this is where we came in, Milton. This was *your* original proposal. I 
seem to remember it wasn't terribly well received. A number of people 
called instead for making the narrowing of the digital divide the priority 
issue, *as the .coop Registrar Agreement now does*. I proposed a more far 
reaching position concerning the establishment of a trust fund for wider 
non-commercial Internet issues. At first you dismissed this, but then 
conceded it could be viable.

But now you have simply reverted to *your own* original position and 
without discussing it with the rest of us you have submitted a new draft to 
the TF. Frankly, I find this outrageous.

Chris Bailey