Re: [nc-org] Re: First draft of an ORG policy - please comment

[Cary Karp <ck@nrm.se>]

Quoting Milton:

> ... you raise the issue of whether a museum attempting to
> register in ORG would be "referred to [the] .museum [registry]"
>
> This is a rather astounding concept,

It is hardly a novel thought, being a direct corollary of the
original notion of .org as the home of organizations for which there
were no more explicitly-labelled domains.

> ... it assumes that registration within ORG, which is now fully
> automated and likely to remain so, would suddenly become
> completely manual, and reviewed by someone capable of making
> judgments about the identity or status of organizations. I just
> don't think that is feasible in a registry with several millions
> of customers.

I don't at this point have any clear notion of the full purpose for
which the ORG-TF was created but assumed when making my remarks that
there might be some intention of forging a delimited policy for it.
If we end up suggesting that .org be fully open, as it is today,
there will be no issue of policy enforcement and any entities
whatsoever can decide if they wish to use the domain.

If we were to recommend no more focus than that .org be reserved for
the use of non-commercial organizations, some policy enforcement
mechanism would be necessary. The degree to which policy enforcement
can be automated may, I suppose, depend on the intricacy of the
policy but I certainly hope that we are not going to allow technical
constraints to play a proscriptive role in our action.

The creation of inclusion criteria simultaneously creates exclusion
criteria and these may impinge on segments of the community in a
manner that generates some discomfort. If no inclusion criteria are
foreseen for the revised .org, do we really need a task force to
confirm the status quo?  Or is it simply so that the TF is intended
to have precisely that formal role?  (These are nothing more than
questions and please don't pounce on me for asking them.)

> Second, it seems to assume that registries, rather than end
> users themselves, are the best judge of where end users should
> register. While you back away from that implication, the simple
> fact is that if a TLD such as .museum cannot attract its
> intended constituency, then yes, the domain has little value.

I make no assumptions, whatsoever, along the lines that you suggest.
If there is going to be a large number of narrowly chartered new
TLDs, I would expect them to meet with varying degrees of success.

> But that has nothing at all to do with the appropriate policies
> for .ORG. Policy for the ORG domain should not be warped in
> order to ensure that other domains succeed.

This is getting a bit extreme. What have I said that even suggests
that I feel .org policy be forged with any thought other than to the
needs of its target community?  What I did say is that any action
that is taken along those lines may have a suite of consequences. I
trust that this TF was created precisely for the purpose of
discussing such things. I trust further that some differences of
opinion are not only to be expected, but will provide impetus
towards useful results. (If we all have precisely the same thoughts,
there really doesn't need to be more than one of us here.)

/Cary