[CPWG] PIR response to NCSG ltr to ICANN

[David Mackey]

I've been doing my best to keep up to date with all the information coming
out of this transaction. Thank you Marita, and others, for continuing to
share information sources on this topic to this list.

As I search for a concluding opinion as an end user of the Internet on this
transaction, the best case result I see is that this transaction is neutral
for me as an end user. .ORG remains as an important and unique player in
the registry ecosystem championing Public Interest causes as before just
under the control of Ethos rather than the Internet Society.

On the other hand, the worst case scenario is that this transaction
corrupts the Public Interest stakeholder role that PIR has historically
represented on the Internet. The historical role of PIR has important
benefits to me as an end user. It also changes the relationship of .ORG
registrants from assumed stakeholders of .ORG protected by the Internet
Society into future customers of Ethos. Finally, the nature of the
transaction does not appear to fit the expected process you'd find in the
multistakeholder model used in ICANN. The CEO and board of the Internet
Society seem to be acting narrowly from their interests of the Internet
Society organization, and not accepting input from the larger Internet
community. Is the Internet Society a "stakeholder" in the larger Internet
community, or is it an independent actor strictly controlled by its CEO and
board?

The other thing to consider is that Ethos seems to be promising no
significant changes how .ORG is run in the short term, but the eventual
payoff to Ethos is the necessary sale of PIR to another company at some
point in the (distant?) future. In retrospect, the discussion around
removing the price cap on .ORG prices earlier this year, seems to be rather
short sighted. Has anyone thought of the long term impact to end users and
the broader Internet if control of PIR switches from the Internet Society
to Ethos?

Have I missed something important in my high level thinking?

On Sat, Dec 21, 2019 at 4:13 AM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
wrote:

> Dear Marita,
>
> a WIKI page relating to this topic has been opened since late November on
> https://community.icann.org/display/alacpolicydev/At-Large+Workspace%3A+ISOC+Sells+PIR
>
> To this date it has remained static.
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
> On 20/12/2019 17:29, Marita Moll wrote:
>
> Colleagues: Here are some thoughts from PIR on NCSG's letter to ICANN.
> Although Leon has said that the community needs to talk to PIR and ISOC, it
> seems that talking to ICANN does not go unnoticed.
>
> https://thenew.org/reflecting-on-community-recommendations-to-improve-org/
>
> Is there timeline around a potential letter from At Large?
>
> Did anyone in our group get to the community webinar? Any reflections?  I
> hope to find time to listen to it soon.
>
> Marita
>
> _______________________________________________
> CPWG mailing list
> CPWG at icann.org
> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg
>
> _______________________________________________
> By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your
> personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance
> with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and
> the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can
> visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or
> configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or
> disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
>
>
> --
> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhDhttp://www.gih.com/ocl.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> CPWG mailing list
> CPWG at icann.org
> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg
>
> _______________________________________________
> By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your
> personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance
> with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and
> the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can
> visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or
> configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or
> disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cpwg/attachments/20191221/3a47c4f8/attachment.html>