[nc-org] Re: Revised Statement of Policy

[Cary Karp <ck@nrm.se>]

Quoting Milton:

> NAMES COUNCIL .ORG DIVESTITURE TASK FORCE
>
> Statement of Policy (v 2.0, August 29, 2001)

Is it appropriate to call this a policy statement?  If the role of
the NC is to determine and report on consensus, shouldn't its task
forces label their deliverables accordingly?

> 1. Administration of ORG should be delegated to a new,
> non-profit entity with international support

In the current ICANN frame of reference, the administrative entities
that share operative responsibility for gTLDs are ICANN itself, the
registry operator, the registrars and -- in the case of a narrowly
restricted domain -- the sponsoring organization.

> The new registry should develop policies and practices
> supportive of noncommercial constituencies and registrants. It
> should be authorized to contract with commercial service
> providers to perform technical and service functions.

A pivotal difference between sponsored and unsponsored TLDs, as
these terms thus far have been defined, is that ICANN retains policy
control over the latter. I therefore wonder if it is wisest to
equate the newORG maintenance agency with its registry. I think we
should be shooting for an expansion of the conceptual and procedural
bases for the creation of a sponsoring organization, and then
describe the newORG adminstrative body as its Sponsoring
Organization.

I will not belabor the following point beyond mentioning it one
final time -- describing a domain in a manner that is intended to
make it attractive to a subset of the registrant community, without
in any formal way restricting the domain for the use of that
community, is not the same task as establishing a policy basis for
the operation of a TLD.

> 2. The new ORG registry must function efficiently and
> reliably. The entity chosen by ICANN must show its
> commitment to a high quality of service for all .ORG
> users worldwide, including a commitment to making
> registration, assistance and other services available
> in different time zones and different languages.

Are we suggesting that ICANN would not otherwise require that a
registry provide reliable high-quality service to its target
community?

> ... .ORG should continue as an unrestricted TLD.

Fine. This means that anybody can register in it. We intend for it
to be described and operated it in a manner that is appealing to
non-commercial registrants. Will this make it unappealing to
commercial enitities?  There are at least a of few of these among
the current registrants and, if newORG is going to continue to serve
the needs of its entire registrant community, some accomodation of
commercial interests will be a necessity.

As ever, the preceding remarks should not be taken in any way to
suggest that I have the slightest substantive disagreement with our
stating a need for a registry that is operated on a non-commercial
basis, and with placing newORG with that registry. I do think,
though, that we are not going to have an easy time getting ICANN to
create a new organizational entity for the purpose of drafting
compelling arguments in support of the use of newORG by
non-commercial registrants.

> 7. .ORG's administration must be consistent with
> policies defined through ICANN processes, such as
> policies regarding registrar accreditation, shared
> registry access, dispute resolution, and access to
> registration contact data. Consistency does not mean
> total uniformity, however; the new registry's mandate
> to support non-commercial interests should permit it
> latitude to develop special policies and practices
> suited to those interests so long as they do not
> undermine ICANN's policy objectives.

This is the precise underlying purpose of the charters that are now
being drafted for each of the new sTLDs. At the risk of being
insufferably tedious, the differentiation of the target communities
from each other requires some clearly defined basis.

Given our own reference to,

> the difficulties of establishing an easily enforcable, globally
> acceptable definition of "non commercial"

we are going to have a rough time establishing the requisite
demarkation for newORG.

/Cary