[council] Dot Org RFP

[Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr>]

NC Colleagues,

The reactivated NC Dot Org TF has been set at the NC of 24 April 2002
with the single task of providing comments to the NC on the Dot Org RFP.

Subsequent to that request, the Dot Org TF convened a teleconference 
with Louis Touton on 30 April, to make a tour de table of matters of 
interest before RFC publication, mainly understanding of operational 
and financial elements and related facts.

This teleconference was considered very useful.

On 1 May the RFC has been posted on ICANN web site 
<http://www.icann.org/tlds/org/>

The Non Commercial constituency was the only one commenting on the 
posted RFP draft. While in general comfortable with the RFP, 
the Non Commercial constituency emitted three minor comments:
 (1) to have in written that neither restriction or possible 
     eviction of existing registrants will ever happen in Dot Org; 
 (2) to consider the support from the Dot Org community as 
     an important factor in the selection of Dot Org Registry
 (3) to state that Appenix K, which is a list of reserved domain 
     names, does not apply to Dot Org (where all that names have 
     been already registered since a long time).
The Non Commercial constituency suggested that RFP could require
registry operators to avoid exclusive agreements with Non-Profit 
organizations that are bidding for control of .org, so that any 
non-profit would have access to the same commercial operator on 
the same terms.
This would address many of the concerns about fake non-profits
being put forward, and would make it easier for the Board to choose
both: the best non-profit bidder and the best registry operator.

An issue of possible conflict of interest of ICANN Board member 
Dr. Robert Blokzijl, in the context of the reassignment of .ORG,
has been reported to the NC Dot Org TF mailing list, see: 
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/nc-org/Arc00/msg00411.html

On a personal note, I wish that the divestment of Dot Org
preserves stability, an equal traitement of Registrants,
and at the same time brings diversity and competition.

Elisabeth Porteneuve