[CPWG] A white knight on the horizon for .ORG?

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il 2020-01-09 01:18 Greg Shatan ha scritto:

> My understanding is that the cooperative intends to continue funding IETF, which is one of ISOC's primary missions.
> 
> _Weird. That underscores the concern that this is as much about burying ISOC as it is about rescuing .ORG.  I'd be very interested to see what they propose. Right now, that would mean funding ISOC, since IETF is an unincorporated activity of ISOC. Do they propose to both starve ISOC and dismantle it?_

Well, the IETF is actually incorporated as IETF LLC, even if it's true
that it is currently 100% owned by ISOC (
https://ietf.org/about/administration/background/ ). Perhaps ISOC would
be interested in selling the IETF as well? Though I don't think they can
make a billion dollars out of it. 

Anyway, just a historical note: when ISOC was awarded .org, "ensuring
the money to run the IETF" was the #1 justification that was given for
the deal in the corridors. Of course ISOC was chosen after a lengthy
bidding process; still everyone in the ICANN community understood that
picking them was necessary to keep the Internet running - if not for
that, we could have heard much stronger complaints at that time already.
I've not been meeting Esther for over a decade now, so I have no idea of
her motivations, but I suppose she is just trying to preserve the
original deal: the .org extra revenue, after running costs are covered,
is meant to pay for the practical cost of the vital community efforts
that keep the Internet running, not for some venture capitalist's yacht
in the Bahamas. 

More generally, this is also a cultural issue; perhaps in the United
States this might be seen as normal, but in other parts of the world
(and dot org is used globally) it is just unfair to make significant
profit over a basic community resource, no matter how well the resource
is run. This explains why so many people find it just right that dot org
should only ever be assigned to a non-profit entity. 

-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->        now blogging & more at http://bertola.eu/   <--------
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