[governance] Fwd: [Internet Policy] I just listened to the video teleconference about Ethos and the proposed new .org registry.

[parminder]

I thought the below may be useful to the people here ... parminder



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Internet Policy] I just listened to the video
teleconference about Ethos and the proposed new .org registry.
Date: 	Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:56:46 -0000
From: 	Brandt Dainow via InternetPolicy <internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org>
Reply-To: 	bd at thinkmetrics.com
Organisation: 	Thinkmetrics
To: 	'Jay Sulzberger' <jays at panix.com>, ISOC Internet Policy
<internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org>



Here's a quick summary of my understanding of what has emerged from the
webinar with the PIR and Ethos Capital:

They all agree that .org's are different and unique and that as a
consequence, so is the PIR. Eric's of Ethos Capital's words were that .org
says "that organisation is out there because there is something they believe
in". (For the purposes of this forum, I suggest this settles the question of
whether the PIR is just another registry business or whether .orgs are
different and deserving of special treatment - the people running it, and
the people buying it, say it is different. Furthermore, comments below
indicate they think that difference is what gives the PIR its value.)

The PIR does not have a domain squatting problem or any other of the issues
associated with commercial TLD's. PIR was eager to point out how clean the
registry is, and that has always been the cleanest TLD of all. In the PIR's
view there is nothing within their activity which needs to be fixed, this is
all about expansion and enhancement.

The PIR will be reconstituted as a Public Benefit LLC. According to PIR's
legal council, this means that the PIR's current mission focus of "offering
low-cost services to non-profit organisations" will be enshrined in the
company responsibilities, thus overriding the primary responsibility to the
shareholders. While I understand this to be the aim of the PBLLC
legislation, it is not certain that it will have this effect in practice -
legal scholars differ on this point and it has yet to be tried in courts.
(See
https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1919&context=
facpubs "Is the Public Benefit Corporation Trivial?")
It may be that being a Public Benefit LLC will lock them down to the terms
of their formation, but we have yet to see what those terms are. It's
possible they could be written in manner which allows for the PIR to do
almost anything, or in a manner which is open to different interpretations.
It is also possible that they won't be very binding anyway.
There will a Stewardship Council (SC) - initially appointed by the PIR, and
soon. Size of the SC is unknown. The SC will recruit new members. Term of
membership will be 1-3 years. Members will not be appointed by the PIR or
voted in by any democratic system. As I understand it, once populated by
people approved by the PIR, the SC will become self-sustaining. Members
will not be paid. Companies cannot be members.

The SC will take input from the .org community. How is yet to be
determined. It is unclear whether the SC will "interpret" or poll .org
opinions or pass them on unmodified or simply use them (in a manner
determined by them) to formulate their own SC opinions.

The SC will (I think) have some authority over launching of some new PIR
initiatives. It will be able to give an opinion on price rises, but not
stop them.

My understanding is that the SC is an important branding exercise for Ethos,
which is not to say it's illusionary, but there may be some spin here. Eric
(Ethos) said "it's mission critical for people to understand that we are
going to be hands off . because if the public believe that is not the case
it very much damages the brand, the long-term brand, of the business"
So - the purpose of the SC is to interact with the PIR board is to ensure
the .org community are happy with the way the PIR acts, but I think they are
spinning how much limitation there will really be over what the PIR does.
The SC will be initially composed of Ethos appointees, who will almost
certainly share the same vision of things as Ethos, and will then pick
future SC members. So it's difficult to see how such a body will come to
include a representative range of viewpoints.
All of this is meaningless if the .org community can't communicate its
views. This requires that the SC has a proper communication channel, and
that the SC fairly and accurately passes those views to the PIR.
The big issue here is how the .org community communicates. First, there
seems to be an assumption the .org community will have a single opinion on
every issue. With millions of members, that's almost certainly never going
to be the case. So a range of opinions needs to be represented
proportionally. That requires specific forms of communication channel - not
all structures will allow for that. It's also unclear how a .org community
can even be brought into existence. The only thing they all have in common
is ownership of a .org domain name. How does one get the local sports team,
a national hospital and an international charity communicating together and
what are their common interests here? Several times it was mentioned how
important it was to bring the leaders of major NGO's and charities into the
process, so there is a danger it will simply become a bunch of professional
leaders of very large enterprises talking amongst themselves in an elitist
filter bubble, especially if membership of the SC is by invitation from
within the SC. I think it unlikely they would invite into their ranks
anyone who has made them feel uncomfortable with tough questions and strong
criticisms.

Finally, and perhaps most important - what the PIR and Ethos Capital propose
does not address the fundamental objection. It addresses concerns people
have regarding foreseeable harms from the shift from not-for-profit to
profit. However, it still leaves the PIR as a profit-oriented company.
Some people object to that. Not because of what we can imagine could go
wrong, but on principle. This principle may be founded on fear of
unknowable consequences - in which we accept the future will always surprise
us, so we avoid opening the door to risks we can't predict by selling the
PIR to a small group of billionaires, and thus putting the PIR into play as
a tradable market commodity. Alternatively, some people simply believe a
society is a better one if there are parts of it which are not run for
profit.

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