[NCUC-DISCUSS] Reuters reports new cooperative formed to take over management of .ORG
Kathy Kleiman
kathy at dnrc.tech
Wed Jan 22 17:12:30 CET 2020
Dear Joly,
I hope all is well. I am left strangely untouched by the eloquence of
public relations team of PIR and Ethos. As many have said before me, the
"safeguards" that Ethos is promising with its Stewardship team are
merely words. A Stewardship Council sounds like a lovely idea, but what
*obligations* is there for Ethos private equity firm to pay any
attention to it? Also doesn't Ethos appoint its members?
What really surprises me before is the assertion that "PIR had a
tremendous Advisory Council." While the people on PIR's Advisory Council
may have been tremendous, Brian Cimbolic's wording implies that somehow
the work of the PIR Advisory Council has been tremendously influential.
The current PIR Advisory Council, we are told, *was not even told of the
change of control* or asked what this would mean for the community of
noncommercial registrants they are supposed to represent? If the
Council is so important, how could it be overlooked for input? The fact
is that advisory councils -- whatever their names -- are purely advisory.
Because overall, PIR is run by its Board of Directors, appointed by
ISOC, and Ethos Capital will be run by its owners, whose names have
been redacted in recent ICANN materials. (We don't even know who will be
running Ethos.) Whatever they decide makes them the most money is how
"Ethos" will operate. If Ethos and PIR are changing this fundamental
operation of American capitalism and allowing "advisory councils" to
dictate real policies, I'll be shocked, but at the least, they must make
their words binding --not mere words on a page.
Best, Kathy
1/20/2020 4:36 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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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--
Kathy Kleiman
President, Domain Name Rights Coalition
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