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

[Greg Shatan]

The "White Knight" looks more like a "Dark Prince":

https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/01/08/new-org-stewards-or-vultures-circling/


Among many other things, the fact that Bill Woodcock is in this group might
explain the bizarre "analysis" that PCH circulated a few weeks ago...

Greg Shatan
greg at isoc-ny.org
President, ISOC-NY
*"The Internet is for everyone"*


On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 12:24 PM Vittorio Bertola via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
wrote:

> 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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