[ncdnhc-discuss] About Marketing Practices in .ORG

[Kent Crispin]

On Sun, Dec 30, 2001 at 04:06:14PM +0000, Chris Bailey wrote:
[...]
> 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.

Interesting.

> 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.

Very different case.  .coop is a restricted TLD.

> 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.

.coop is a restricted TLD.

> 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*.

.coop is a restricted TLD.

You can do lots of thigs with restricted TLDs that you can't do with 
unrestricted TLDs.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent at songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain