[NCUC-DISCUSS] Reuters reports new cooperative formed to take over management of .ORG

Mon Jan 20 17:08:01 CET 2020

“What matters is the Registry Agreement, as I've said all along. “ Exactly, I don’t know why we go around the bush. This agreement gives PIR and ICANN right and obligation. Unless we wanna breach it, and pay the consequences, which no one wants to, we have to play by the rules we wrote as an organisation. Let’s talk that, let’s talk how we are gonna play that chess, because there is no other, any debate outside it is irrelevant and distractive.

On the other hand, I agree that CCOR in no way gives me any trust or insurance, much less ICANN hand picking registrars. Our insurance, our warrants, is the Agreement. If we want a different .org operation we don’t need to look further than the agreement we own, and that in later renewals we can change, we can negotiate to change it with the current holders, etc.

Let’s talk about the agreement, how we can use it, and what channels do we have to work it. Don’t loose the focus.

Martín

> On 13 Jan 2020, at 17:33, Mueller, Milton L <milton at GATECH.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Alan
> 
> In your discussion of At Large elections, you fail to note that Mike Roberts, Esther Dyson, Andrew McLaughlin and the entire initial board and legal staff of ICANN were adamantly opposed to having elections and membership at all. Not opinion, fact. They delayed the elections as much as they could. And when we had them, elections were limited them to 5 board seats instead of the entire board. And then after the members elected dissidents to the board that the staff and board didn't like, they abolished them and created the current dysfunctional RALO/ALAC structure. 
> 
> So you seem to have a rather distorted perspective on ICANN's early history and the role of these characters in it. No one in the early days of NCUC/NCSG viewed Dyson or Roberts as friendly and supportive of our community.
> 
> As for the claim that CCOR is "way better" than Ethos/PIR, three responses. First, there is no indication that ICANN is in any position to simply re-bid the entire ORG delegation to anyone who pops up, and if it does rebid it should be via an open call, not an insider deal such as is proposed by CCOR. Second, CCOR would have a lot more credibility with the community if it was not based on a cabal of old ICANN insiders. I mean Esther Dyson? Really? Third, as a cooperative they claim that ORG would be run by its "members" by which they mean ORG registrants. Since the _majority_ of ORG registrants could very well be defensive registrations and domainers, it is not clear to me that this is a win for us. 
> 
> As for Wikimedia, they are the lipstick on the pig. Nice people, great mission, but CCOR is just another claimant for a $1,135 billion asset, no different in principle from ISOC or Ethos. Whatever they are proposing is nothing more than a promise at this point, just like Ethos. What matters is the Registry Agreement, as I've said all along. 
> 
> MM
> From: Alan Levin <alan at afridns.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 13, 2020 3:33 AM
> To: Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu>
> Cc: Wisdom Donkor <wisdom.dk at gmail.com>; NCUC-discuss <ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org>
> Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] Reuters reports new cooperative formed to take over management of .ORG
>  
> Hi,
> 
> Milton, I am surprised by this.... it's pure opinion, and I must point it out to others... :(  comments inline... 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 7:41 PM Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu <mailto:milton at gatech.edu>> wrote:
> Oh, this is such hypocrisy. So Andrew McLaughlin, Mike Roberts and Esther Dyson (who totally dissed the noncommercial constituency when they held positions of power in ICANN are now coming to the rescue of the noncommercial community by altruistically offering to take over an asset worth $1 billion.
> 
> Well actually at that time there was a MUCH stronger focus on At Large and we had a global election! Things were way better from the point of end users, we even had an accountable diverse board.  Some 20 years down the line there are still major issues here... 
> 
>  Those people are _not_ our friends.
> 
> Well, speak for yourself.  As far as I can see they are way better than the organisational ISOC/Ethos deal, from the .org perspective. 
> 
> This is an example of why we need to be careful how we react to this proposed sale. This is just turning into a land grab, by which certain interests (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation) are seeking to exploit the controversy to take over ORG for themselves.
> 
> So are you also pointing to the wikimedia foundation as exploitative?? 
> 
> I have been involved passionately in ISOC for 25 years... after Salt Lake City it was never the same. The Internet Society of South Africa had to split and create Internet South Africa. ISOC has institutional control and is in the Ethos deal. 
> 
> Sincerely
> 
> Alan
> 
> 
>  From: Ncuc-discuss <ncuc-discuss-bounces at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:ncuc-discuss-bounces at lists.ncuc.org>> On Behalf Of Wisdom Donkor
> Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2020 5:28 AM
> To: NCUC-discuss <ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org>>
> Subject: [NCUC-DISCUSS] Reuters reports new cooperative formed to take over management of .ORG
>  
> In this 7 January 2020 article <https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/reuters-america-internet-nonprofit-leaders-fight-deal-to-sell-control-of-org-domain.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar> we learn that, "prominent internet executives told Reuters they have created a nonprofit cooperative they are offering as an alternative owner of .org."
>  
> This would appear to me to pose an existential threat to ISOC, as this nonprofit cooperative - whose membership appears to me to have more political muscle than ISOC has - is not proposing to buy PIR from ISOC, but to instead have the .ORG Registry Agreement assigned to it by ICANN.
>  
> The full article is here, and I have extracted some relevant quotes below: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/reuters-america-internet-nonprofit-leaders-fight-deal-to-sell-control-of-org-domain.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar <https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/reuters-america-internet-nonprofit-leaders-fight-deal-to-sell-control-of-org-domain.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar>
>  
> “What offended me about the Ethos Capital deal and the way it unfolded is that it seems to have completely betrayed this concept of stewardship,” said Andrew McLaughlin, who oversaw the transfer of internet governance from the U.S. Commerce Department to ICANN, completed in 2016.
>  
> Maher and others said the idea of the new cooperative is not to offer a competing financial bid for .org, which brings in roughly $100 million in revenue from domain sales. Instead, they hope that the unusual new entity, formally a California Consumer Cooperative Corporation, can manage the domain for security and stability and make sure it does not become a tool for censorship.
>  
> ... The initial seven directors of the cooperative include former founding ICANN President Michael Roberts, MacArthur Foundation philanthropist Jeff Ubois and Bill Woodcock, whose Packet Clearing House now runs the technical aspects of the .org system under contract.
>  
> The new group has briefed members of the U.S. Congress and hopes to prompt the Internet Society to reconsider the sale. But its best shot at stopping the pending sale lies with ICANN, which can veto any change in ownership out of concern for the security, reliability or stability of the .org domain.
>  
> Best wishes,
>  
> WISDOM DONKOR
> President & CEO
> Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation
> P.O. Box CT 2439, Cantonments, Accra | www.aodirf.org <http://www.aodirf.org/>  / www.afrigeocon.org <http://www.afrigeocon.org/> 
> Tel: +233 20 812 8851
> Skype: wisdom_dk | Facebook: kwasi wisdom |  Twitter: @wisdom_dk 
> __________________________________________________
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> E-government Network Infrastructure and E-application, Internet Governance,  Open Data policies platforms & Community Development, Cyber Security,  Domain Name Systems, Software Engineering, Event Planning & Management, 
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