[governance] [Second Statement] Letter to ICANN Board re: ISOC/PIR sale

[Amrita" (via governance Mailing List]

Looks good Ayden. Thanks for all your efforts.

 

Regards

 

Amrita

 

From: governance-request at lists.riseup.net [mailto:governance-request at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of Ayden Férdeline
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2019 12:18 AM
To: Niels ten Oever
Cc: governance at lists.riseup.net
Subject: Re: [governance] [Second Statement] Letter to ICANN Board re: ISOC/PIR sale

 

Hi all,

 

Thank you for all of the messages indicating support for sending a statement to the ICANN Board. I have pasted some language below for your consideration. Thanks!

 

Best wishes,

Ayden Férdeline

===

 

To:     Maarten Botterman, Chair of the Board, ICANN

Cc:    Göran Marby, President and CEO, ICANN

 

We are writing on behalf of the Internet Governance Caucus in relation to the proposed sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to Ethos Capital. As you are aware, last month the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that Ethos Capital was acquiring all of the assets of PIR, including the .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG Registry Agreements.[1]

 

Nonprofits everywhere rely on .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG domain names for their email, websites, campaigns, and fundraising. These are more than just domains, they are symbols of our desire to do good. As members of a network which encompasses many non-commercial organizations and individuals, we believe that decisions about the future of these TLDs must only be made following consultation with impacted registrants and the global non-commercial Internet community. This advice is consistent with RFC 1591, which states that “a designated manager for a domain” is a “trustee for the delegated domain, and ha[s] a duty to serve the community.”[2]

 

The community that .ORG is intended to serve is non-profit organizations. In 2001, ICANN stated that transferring .ORG away from Verisign and to a new, purpose-built registry would “return the .ORG registry to its original purpose,” and enable .ORG to return “to its originally intended function as a registry operated by and for non-profit organizations.”[3] Furthermore, article 5.1.4 of the 2001 .ORG Registry Agreement between ICANN and Verisign required that Verisign “pay to ICANN or ICANN’s designee the sum of US $5 million, to be used by ICANN in it [sic] sole discretion to establish an endowment to be used to fund future operating costs of the non-profit entity designated by ICANN as successor operator of the .ORG registry.”[4]

 

The community that .NGO and .ONG are intended to serve is non-governmental organizations. Specification 12 of the .NGO Registry Agreement between ICANN and PIR states, “All registrants must demonstrate affiliation through non-governmental organization(s) (“NGO”) membership organizations or through evidence of NGO status.”[5]

 

Unfortunately, in proposing to sell PIR and ignoring its direct and indirect communities, ISOC has now lost the confidence of a substantial number of groups in the .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG communities. This sale has sparked outrage from the non-profit community, with 27 of the world’s largest and most-respected charities sending a letter opposing the sale[6]. We have seen two petitions of opposition formed (one with more than 16,000 signatures)[7], and have seen three Internet Society chapters issue statements disassociating themselves from Internet Society HQ[8]. The sale has generated negative press coverage on CNN[9], in The Wall Street Journal[10], and in the Financial Times[11], not to mention the trade press. The proposed sale has been criticised by Internet veterans like Tim Berners-Lee[12], and it has prompted long-term Internet Society members to question their involvement in the Internet Society as well as to question the ethics of its leadership and the organization’s entire purpose[13]. We are not aware of any respected non-profit that supports the sale of PIR.

 

Accordingly, we ask that ICANN exercise its right in article 7.5 of the .ORG Registry Agreement and withhold its approval for PIR to assign its rights and obligations to Ethos Capital. Likewise, we request that ICANN do the same for the .NGO and .ONG agreements.

 

We similarly request that ICANN find an appropriate replacement for performing the functions of PIR by putting .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG up for public tender. 

 

Such a decision would be consistent with advice issued by the Antitrust Division of the United States’ Department of Justice, which stated in a letter to your predecessor, “ICANN should require competitive bidding for renewals of a gTLD registry agreement, rather than granting the incumbent operator a perpetual right to renew without competition.”[14]

 

Ethos Capital would be welcome to bid for .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG as part of the tender process, as would other more experienced operators, and co-operatives of non-profits and other public interest groups. However, we do not believe that Ethos Capital should be permitted to indirectly acquire these registry agreements by way of purchasing PIR. 

 

This is because Ethos Capital is a newly-established entity with no track record in managing a new or legacy top-level domain, and because they have committed to annually increasing the prices of .ORG domains.[15] We believe a more competitive bidding process would see many organizations bidding for .ORG, which would likely lead to lower registration prices for our resource-poor communities. As you may remember, an important consideration in the criteria for awarding .ORG to ISOC in the first instance was affordability.[16]

 

If ICANN does not exercise its right to withhold approval of the transfer of assets to Ethos Capital, we believe that the non-profit and non-governmental organization community that relies on .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG domains will suffer great harm from the lack of adequate price controls and other specific problems that we cannot currently identify due to the lack of transparency demonstrated by Ethos Capital in its intentions for PIR. 

 

Moving to another top-level domain is not a realistic option for domain name registrants, as they are locked in to their existing domains (.ORG domains registered for longer than three years have an 86.8% renewal rate[17]) and any migration requires that an organization reprint its materials, business cards, and reconfigure its services. The American College of Osteopathic Surgeons, which maintains five .ORG domains, estimates it would cost them $50,000 to move to another top level domain[18], which would stretch the capacity of our resource-poor communities and hinder our good work. 

 

Please, we ask that these top-level domains be managed by a trusted partner that has the confidence of our communities, and not by a venture capital firm. 

 

Thank you for your time and consideration of our request.

 

About the Internet Governance Caucus

 

[[Description to go here]]] 

 

[1]  <https://www.internetsociety.org/news/press-releases/2019/ethos-capital-to-acquire-public-interest-registry-from-the-internet-society/> https://www.internetsociety.org/news/press-releases/2019/ethos-capital-to-acquire-public-interest-registry-from-the-internet-society/

[2]  <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1591> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1591

[3]  <https://www.icann.org/news/icann-pr-2001-03-01-en> https://www.icann.org/news/icann-pr-2001-03-01-en

[4]  <https://www.icann.org/resources/unthemed-pages/registry-agmt-org-2001-05-25-en#5.1.4> https://www.icann.org/resources/unthemed-pages/registry-agmt-org-2001-05-25-en#5.1.4

[5]  <https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/tlds/ngo/ngo-agmt-html-06mar14-en.htm> https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/tlds/ngo/ngo-agmt-html-06mar14-en.htm

[6]  <https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-interest-registry> https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-interest-registry

[7]  <https://www.change.org/p/internet-society-stop-the-org-land-grab> https://www.change.org/p/internet-society-stop-the-org-land-grab and  <https://savedotorg.org/> https://savedotorg.org/

[8] Netherlands ( <https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2019-November/021391.html> https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2019-November/021391.html), Switzerland ( <https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2019-November/021404.html> https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2019-November/021404.html), Portugal ( <https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2019-November/021427.html> https://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/2019-November/021427.html)

[9]  <https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/27/tech/org-domain-sale/index.html> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/27/tech/org-domain-sale/index.html

[10]  <https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonprofits-fear-cost-of-org-domain-names-will-rise-sharply-11574283751> https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonprofits-fear-cost-of-org-domain-names-will-rise-sharply-11574283751

[11]  <https://www.ft.com/content/08066a5a-11b2-11ea-a7e6-62bf4f9e548a> https://www.ft.com/content/08066a5a-11b2-11ea-a7e6-62bf4f9e548a

[12]  <https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/1199752059534413824> https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/1199752059534413824

[13] See correspondence in November 2019 archives:  <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internetpolicy> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internetpolicy

[14] See page 10,  <https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/icann_081218.pdf> https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/icann_081218.pdf

[15] On their website ( <https://www.keypointsabout.org/> https://www.keypointsabout.org/), Ethos Capital states: “Our plan is to live within the spirit of historic practice when it comes to pricing, which means, potentially, annual price increases of up to 10 percent on average.” Note this was not historic practice, as PIR did not raise prices annually. The proposed level of price inflation would see .ORG domains double in price every five years.

[16]  <https://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/org/criteria.htm> https://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/org/criteria.htm 

[17] Page 16,  <https://thenew.org/app/uploads/2019/09/PIR-2018-Annual-Report.pdf> https://thenew.org/app/uploads/2019/09/PIR-2018-Annual-Report.pdf.

[18]  <https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonprofits-fear-cost-of-org-domain-names-will-rise-sharply-11574283751> https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonprofits-fear-cost-of-org-domain-names-will-rise-sharply-11574283751

 

 

 

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Tuesday, December 10, 2019 6:58 PM, Niels ten Oever lists at digitaldissidents.org wrote:

 

I support that too.

Best,

Niels

On 12/10/19 4:40 PM, Wisdom Donkor (via governance Mailing List) wrote:

100% in support.

WISDOM DONKOR

President & CEO

Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation

P.O. Box CT 2439, Cantonments, Accra | www.aodirf.org http://www.aodirf.org

Tel: +233 20 812 8851

Skype: wisdom_dk | Facebook: kwasi wisdom |  Twitter: @wisdom_dk

Specialization:

E-government Network Infrastructure and E-application, Internet Governance,  Open Data policies platforms & Community Development, Cyber Security,  Domain Name Systems, Software Engineering, Event Planning & Management, *

*

MEMBER

UN IGF Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group

UN BPF on Policy Option for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion (CENB)

UN BPF on Gender and Access

UN IGF National Regional Initiatives

UN BPF on IOT, Big Data and AI

Fellow: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, NCSG, NCUC, AFRALO

National SDG Data Roadmaps Advisory Committee, Ghana  

ICANN, Internet Society, Freedom Online Coalition, Diplo Foundation,

Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition

Ghana Open Government Partnership (OGP) Advisory Committee 

World Bank Open Data Working Team,

Africa Open Data Collaborative 

Ghana Energy Commission Data Task-force 

Linux Accra Users Group

On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 3:03 PM Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com mailto:ayden at ferdeline.com> wrote:

Dear all,
 
In addition to writing to the ISOC Board, I would like to suggest that we issue a second statement, this one addressed to the ICANN Board, calling for ICANN to exercise its right in article 7.5 of the .ORG Registry Agreement and to withhold its approval for PIR to assign its rights and obligations to Ethos Capital.
 
Is there support for this proposal?
 
Best wishes,
Ayden Férdeline
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Datactive Research Group

University of Amsterdam

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