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

[Imran Ahmed Shah (via governance Mailing List)]

 Dear All, 
I also second the ammendment proposed by Sylvain, especially conditions for the future bidders.ICANN should prepare criteria for the stewardship of these Registries to remain in the not for profit organizations. 

Best Regards 
Imran Ahmed Shah . 
    On Friday, 13 December 2019, 02:01:24 GMT+5, Sylvain Baya <governance at lists.riseup.net> wrote:  
 
 Hi all,
Please see my comments below (inline)...

Le mer. 11 déc. 2019 7:48 PM, Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com> a écrit :

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
===

Many thanks dear Ayden.

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.


...{i'm not a native english though :'-(} i think it's the Registry which provides a 
service to the community ; then when it comes to the TLD itself, i think there is a 
 need to preferably rephrased as below. I'm also including .COM TLD for illustration : 
“The legitimate community associated to the .ORG TLD is intended to be constituted 
by non-profit organizations ; and any other entity from the Internet community which 
is not fits any other global-scoped TLD like .COM (dedicated to commercial's or for-profit 
entities).”


 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]


...this quotation is fundamental; in its hability to repare an initial error ; though, understandable 
because .ORG is a legacy TLD. Thanks to ICANN, particularly the Chair and members of the 
2001-2002 ICANN Board. They did a great and useful (regulatory) work...


The community that .NGO and .ONG are intended to serve is non-governmental organizations. 


...{again, i'm not a native english though :'-(} i think it's the Registry which provides a service 
to the community ; then when it comes to the TLD itself, i think there is a need to preferably 
rephrased like this : 
“The legitimate community associated to the .NGO and .ONG TLDs is intended to be 
constituted by 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. 


...good advice/request ! The tone is well measured.
Perhaps we should append the following bits of texts to the above : 
"...for public tender, if ISOC persists in its will/desire to separate itself from the PIR, 
in order to satisfy to a claimed need for diversifying its financing model."


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]



...good piece !


Ethos Capital would be welcome to bid for .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG as part of the tender process, 


...i firmly oppose this, because it seems to adding an inconsistency with the fundamental 
logic in "For and By" [*] ; fortunately already quoted [3][4] in this draft. If EC becomes, 
suddently, a non-profit (Beneficial Corp ???), it would be great to recommend it...not before ! 
...i recall that, it's still the last line of defense actually used by the 'dealer' of the PIR : [...] it is not our fault if ICANN itself had accepted for-profits bids during the 2002 .ORG 
registry re-assignment process. You might also know, for instance, that the ISC (Internet 
Systems Consortium) was quickly eliminated, with a memorable comment : ‘too much 
non-profit !’ And yes ! the second bid after the Internet Society was from a for-profit company. [...]
...so, instead of your piece above, consider this alternative : 
“In the spirit of the ICANN Board's resolutions 01.47  & 01.48 [*][**], we firmly recommend 
that only non-profit(non-commercial)'s offers are received during that tender process.” 
“In the same line of recommendation, everyone can observe that the non-commercial 
Internet community seems to be now mature enough to manage the .ORG registry (via 
a commons PIR) itself and without any unecessary intermediary. So, please act accordingly.”__[*]: see section D.1 & D.2 <https://www.icann.org/melbourne/proposed-verisign-agreements-topic.htm>[**]: <https://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-02apr01.htm>

as would other more experienced operators, and co-operatives of non-profits and other public interest groups. 

...should be adjusted to fit with my suggestions above.

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] 


I prefer that we do not mention EC, as much as possible, into this letter. It's not about 
that particular capitalist organization... It's about a simple principle, i can formulate as 
follow : the revenue earned by the .ORG registry MUST benefit to the development of 
the Internet and to support the non-commercial Internet community. Not only a single 
stakeholder in the Internet community...


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]

...it's worth noting this ! thanks.


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/


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


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


see section D.1 & D.2 <https://www.icann.org/melbourne/proposed-verisign-agreements-topic.htm><https://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-02apr01.htm>


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



...what a great find !


[5] 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


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


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


[10] 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


[12] 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/private/internetpolicy/2019-November/author.html#start>


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


[15] On their website (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/tlds/org/criteria.htm#7>


[17] Page 16, 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




Done ! thanks.
Shalom,--sb.
 

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 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





[...]





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
---
[...]
Niels ten Oever
 Researcher and PhD Candidate
 Datactive Research Group
 University of Amsterdam
PGP fingerprint 2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488
 643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3

[...]

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