Managing brand transition costs sounds a black hole that would be difficult to do in reality.
What do you think about capping resale prices?
Hello all,
I've pulled back from the discussions as it seems, at this moment, that everyone has made their salient points. We're now just repeating ourselves, talking past each other, and now FUD-slinging is happening in both directions. Positions are being entrenched and it's starting to look as if this is only going to get resolved through court challenges and lawsuits which both challengers and supporters are confident they'll win. At least in my own experience, when that happens the only ones who win are the lawyers, and for years the issue will consume the time of many people who have better things to do.
This is especially sad when seeing that everyone involved, in their own way, appears to be acting in good faith and wants what they think is best for the future of ISOC, dot-org, global Internet users and indeed those not yet connected.
To that end I propose a path that may enable everyone to save face and get what (I hope) everyone wants. Like every negotiation, nobody gets 100% what they came for but everyone has something that achieves their ultimate objectives. Best of all we get to de-escalate, catch our breaths, move forward and conserve the resources that would otherwise go to litigation.
Obviously, this is only preliminary, most details are missing and numbers can be played with. But could this be at least a reasonable starting point?
The proposal:
The Ethos transaction proceeds as-is, with the current protesters and petition signers agreeing not to oppose it on legal or regulatory grounds (and in turn support this path)
Of the $1.135B that it is set to receive, ISOC earmarks 7% towards creation of a community-governed nonprofit organization with the primary objective of creating a new top-level domain for nonprofits. Of that 7% (approximately $80M), about $50M will be used to create, promote and operate the registry for a number of years, and the remainder will be used as a fund to support the one-time identity-change expenses of qualifying .org registrants who wish to move to the new TLD.
This new community nonprofit will be incorporated in a GDPR country and have a bylaw-entrenched commitment not to sell any assets so long as it is liquid. Registrants in the new TLD will be voting stakeholders, using a model based on what's used at CIRA or other nonprofit ccTLDs.
Neither ISOC, Ethos Capital nor any of their associated organizations will impede the creation of this TLD. Indeed, they will recommend to ICANN an expedient approval, whether by acquisition of an existing TLD or application in the next round.
The intended results:
ISOC gets the deal it wants for sustaining, stable revenue, just a little less than originally negotiated -- the net is still more than $1B. Plus ISOC is no longer in a conflict of interest when getting involved in DNS policy.
Nothing needs to change in the deal struck (assuming ISOC didn't agree to anything that would inhibit this)
Ethos Capital can do whatever it damn well pleases with .org -- all the new services and innovations they claim to want to do, they can knock themselves out
A stable TLD exists for nonprofits and others who support having a strong mission-driven presence among registries; those who oppose .org going for-profit now get to put up or shut up, and we can assist those choosing to move
The greater ISOC community takes the ... challenges ... presented by its transparency of negotiation as a learning moment, to be used to help it strengthen stakeholder relationships going forward. It gets to do soul searching that can actually affect positive change
We all work together to put out this publicity dumpster fire and let ISOC concentrate on the good stuff it wants to do.