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

[Joly MacFie]

I'm interested to know what more community commitments , in reality, CCOR,
or even ISOC, can be expected to make beyond those outlined in the the
Ethos/PIR
Stewardship Community Webinar
<https://isoc.live/pir/2019-12-19_PIR_Stewardship_Community_Webinar.pdf>.

Here is an excerpt:

*Brian Cimbolic I briefly touched on the safeguards that we are going to be
putting in place, to ensure that we continue as an exemplary registry. The
Stewardship Council is one of those safeguards. Previously, PIR had a
tremendous Advisory Council. They're dedicated people, from around the
world, that provided informal advice to PIR staff that we often
incorporated into what we do, into our mission, and we appreciated that
advice tremendously. At the end of the day, though, it was a body that
advised PIR staff. It was not a public facing body that had any sort of
reports coming out of it, as to the activity activities of the council,. It
fed directly into PIR. What the Stewardship Council does, is take that
notion and elevate it significantly. It will be transparent, an independent
body comprised of members from the .ORG community. It's meant to serve as a
cross section of the .ORG community, from nonprofits, CSR, those that seek
to do good around the world. through .ORG. That's the idea of the
Stewardship Council, and who they will be. What they'll do is, they're
focused on balancing the interests of all .ORG stakeholders,, those .ORG
registrants, donors, shareholders, PIR employees. The Stewardship Council
is really meant to serve as a bridge across all of those interests , and
really strike the balance in its advice, that it provides to PIR. We
anticipate that the Council should be up and running within 90 days of
closing. The Stewardship Council has three main roles. I'll expand on each
of these briefly. It will provide direct oversight to safeguard the
interests of the .ORG community. It's going to provide advice, and
strategic recommendations, to the PIR board, and issue periodic reports.
PIR, as I mentioned previously, we already do transparency reporting on our
anti-abuse efforts. We also issue annual reports. The Stewardship Council
will continue in that tradition, but also elevate both the ways that we
report the information, and what we're reporting. What makes this
Stewardship Council different, from many advisory bodies, is it has direct
power over a number of some pretty core elements of PIR, moving forward. It
provides direct oversight, to safeguard the interests of the .ORG
community, in a number of ways. First and foremost, it will have the
ultimate say on the core values of PIR, how we conduct our business here,
how we conduct ourselves to the outside world, how we serve as stewards to
.ORG. It ultimately has that authority over PIR. Secondly, it will ratify
policies on safeguards against censorship, of free expression, in the .ORG
domain space. This is really key. At PIR, we are not Internet censors. We
don't ever want to be, and we won't. The Stewardship Council will
ultimately have to ratify these policies on censorship, and free
expression, and we as a company will follow them. So, the Stewardship
Council will ultimately serve as a very prominent safeguard, with
transparent outputs that the community can digest, and recognize that PIR
will not serve as Internet censors. They are a virtual guardrail to ensure
that that does not happen. Finally, the council will make and manage grants
on behalf of the Community Enablement Fund. This is one I'm personally very
excited about. We can innovate, and invest back into the .ORG communities,
in ways that we couldn't previously. This is a prime example. The
Stewardship Council will oversee donations that come from the Community
Enablement Fund, moving forward. Those are the oversight functions. The
Stewardship Council also has some critically important advisory functions.
First, and foremost, it's going to provide strategic advice on the balance
and priorities for the various stakeholders in the.org
<http://the.org/> community. The Stewardship Council will help strike that
balance, and provide strategic advice on what that balance should be. *

*Also, something Nora mentioned, we are going to be forming a Public
Benefit LLC. Contained within the Certificate of Formation will be a
statement of public benefit. The statement of public benefit will enshrine,
in the organizational documents, the price commitments that Erik Brooks
recently blogged about. That will be built in to the organizational
structure here. If we ever sought to try and change that, it would require
changing those documents. Before that would happen, the Stewardship Council
would have to provide advice, in a transparent, open, way on any proposed
change like that. Finally, the Stewardship Council will issue
recommendations on a product and service roadmap for the .ORG community.
These people are here for a reason. They're influencers representing
important parts of the .ORG community. Having that sort of advice from them
will be extremely valuable in our products and services moving forward. *

* Mechanically, talking about the Stewardship Council, it will meet at
least twice a year, and will have staggered overlapping terms of up to
three years. The nominating committee will select the members of the
Stewardship Council, once the Stewardship Council is up and running. The
initial slate of stewards would be selected by the PIR board. One of the
first things that the Stewardship Council will do is to create a
nomination, or selection committee. That body, in conjunction with the PIR
board, would ultimately be the entity that selects its own members. The
Stewardship Council will work on the basis of consensus. it would receive
reimbursement for its expenses, an honorarium provided by PIR, but,
ultimately, serving on the council is intended to be the honor unto itself.*

joly

On Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 1:17 PM Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu> wrote:

> Thank you, Martin, for hitting the nail on the head:
>
>
>
> So, unless we can oppose with success, we need to know what are the rules
> that our conflict will be ruled by. As I see, or best shot is to use the
> leverage we have to “reasonable oppose” to ask for modification in the
> agreement with ethos, so we make sure .org stays for the community. In the
> end, I don’t see ICAN legal going to court against ISOC, Ethos and PIR in a
> million dollar conflict, jeopardising the .org stability and the ripples it
> would cause.
>
>
>
> If we are going to re open .org and terminate ISOC, then we should do an
> open round, no hand picking. And we should put all our concerns in the
> agreement.
>
>
>
> +100
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