[ncdnhc-discuss] Board Positions on .ORG

[Milton Mueller]

Adam:
It's interesting to read these comments. 

What Andrew McLaughlin said to the Board was perfectly 
consistent with what he said to those of us involved. 
He correctly represented the NC Task Force report - 
that it only permitted, not recommended, use of
surplus funds for other things. He expressed concerns about 
subjective criteria and asked for the noncommercial community 
broadly and the NCDNHC to provide guidance to the Board in 
making such a selection. 

Various people were taking steps to do develop a 
coordinated Noncommercial effort to provide guidance
to the Board. 

In short, on the surface there seemed to be a willingness on
the part of the staff to accept the TF report and work
with it, while recognizing the difficult time constraints.

So whatever happened between the time of that discussion
and the Board's decision is a mystery to me. I was not at
Accra and have no idea. 

It's not my purpose to point fingers of blame, but I still
believe strongly that a major mistake was made, possibly
through just confusion or fear or ignorance. And contrary
to Alejandro's typically divisive and unconstructive assertions,
it's not about my role at all - it's about the role of the DNSO
in ICANN policy formulation. You just can't set up a formal 
structure for policy development and ignore it at crunch time.
The DNSO has been effectively killed by this decision. 
There are numerous other decisions and processes that 
undermined the DNSO, but this one was the coup de grace.

>>> Adam Peake <ajp at glocom.ac.jp> 04/03/02 06:49AM >>>
Transcripts of the Accra public meeting include the discussion of
dot.org

See the last items in the morning session file, at 
<http://www.icann.org/accra/captioning-morning-13mar02.htm>, Louis 
Touton's and Andrew McLaughlin's comments.  They are concerned about 
details (that staff and board have to fill out) timing and criteria 
for judging applications. Timing in particular is a bind, but so are 
other problems that seem to be bothering Louis and Andrew.  Any way 
for the names council task force to reform (even informally) to 
provide guidance?

And in the afternoon session, 
<http://www.icann.org/accra/captioning-afternoon-13mar02.htm>, 
opening comment, Amadeu asks a question of the task force/names 
council. About marketing and policy oversight body.

One of the more troubling rumors (as far as I'm concerned) about 
dot.org is one that says VeriSign plans to establish a not for profit 
entity to enter a bid. I hear of people trying to drum up support for 
such an effort among Asia Pacific region non profits. Idea of 
VeriSign divesting org to itself is a little troublesome. (and with 
my weird foreigner's view of US taxes I can imagine them ending up 
with a tax break of more than $5 million for giving $5 million to 
themselves :-)

Thanks,

Adam
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