[council] Re: ICANN Board resolution on .org

[vint cerf <vinton.g.cerf@wcom.com>]

Grant,

thanks for taking time to raise these questions; the dialog is
useful.

which specific recommendations do you feel were missing
and should be re-instated?

The board debated in some detail:

1. requirement that the bidder be a non-profit, and concluded
that this requirement was neither necessary nor did it come with
any assurance that the non-profit status was real or artificially
created (e.g. by a for-profit entity). There is ample incentive
for a non-profit to make a bid thanks to the $5M offered by
VeriSign in such an instance.

2. The board concluded that efficiency operation for the current
and anticipated users of .org was a key requirement and that the
idea of specifically endorsing "good works" uses of "surplus" was
an invitation to all kinds of oversight tangles that would not
do the operator of .org, ICANN or the users of .org any good.
The board is very aware of the time criticality of coming to a 
conclusion on a successor for .org operation by the end of the
year 2002. Complexity in terms/conditions would make that milestone
all the more difficult to achieve and would place operational
complications in the day to day subsequent oversight. 

3. The RFP will in any case be put up for public comment and the
views of the Names Council will be of considerable interest to the
board and staff.



Vint

At 05:24 PM 4/3/2002 +1200, Grant Forsyth wrote:
>Dear Vint and Stuart
>I note from the minutes of the ICANN Board meeting of 13 March 2002 in
>Accra, that the Board resolved to direct the President to issue an RFP
>seeking applications for the reassignment of the .org TLD.
>Absent from the resolution is mention of key conditions of that RFP or any
>reference to those aspects of the DNSO report on the matter which spells out
>the consensus view as to key conditions of any such RFP.
>
>As the Business Constituency representative on the DNSO Task Force, the
>absence of explicit reference to the specific conditions detailed in the
>DNSO report concern me and the BC. 
>Another key recommendation of the DNSO report was that a draft of any RFP
>prepared by the ICANN staff, be provided to the Names Council for review
>prior to its public dissemination.  I see no mention of such a process in
>the resolution.
> 
>I understand that there may have been aspects of the DNSO report that were
>not fully understood by the ICANN staff or were felt to be confusing by the
>staff or Board.  If that is the case, I think I am safe in suggesting that
>the Names Council would welcome the opportunity to dialogue with the staff
>in an effort to explain any perceived confusion and misunderstandings or an
>assurance that this is not that there is no such confusion.
> 
>It would be a great pity if the DNSO, having worked so well to derive a
>strong, consensus based recommendation to the Board, were in large part
>ignored. 
> 
>I urge you to allay any concerns I and others of the DNSO have over the
>apparent omission  of the explicit policy recommendations forwarded to the
>Board by way of the DNSO report and assure us that those recommendations
>will be included in the RFP and the RFP will be provided to the Names
>Council for review prior to its public dissemination.
> 
>I look forward to your response.
> 
>Grant Forsyth