Eric: Thanks for your response. The sTLD sponsors are able to make policies for their registries with or without this provision. The proposed unique provision for .coop doesn't change that at all. All it would do is permit them to seek an exemption if they don't like a community consensus policy. Interestingly, the other sTLDs that just went through the contracting process (e.g., .mobi, .tel, .asia, .museum, .jobs, etc.) did not require this provision in order to sign the agreement, and they were satisfied with their abilities to make policies for their communities. If anyone else wants to file comments, send them to coop-renewal-2007@icann.org Best, Jon -----Original Message----- From: Eric Brunner-Williams [mailto:brunner@abenaki.wabanaki.net] Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2007 9:36 AM To: Nevett, Jonathon Cc: Registrars Constituency; brunner@abenaki.wabanaki.net Subject: Re: [registrars] .Coop Comments Jonathon, I didn't agree with you. The point of having sponsored registries is to place some policy authority with the sponsor, so that .coop is in fact for cooperatives and has value as a brand, aand .aero is for bits that fly (and have value in being named). I think you should simply come out openly against the stld model, as Milton Meuller and Jeff Williams did during the Working Group C process, after I proposed the stld model in the first place. Your reasoning and theirs is indistinguishable -- no policy delegation to the sponsor(s). I'll mention again, the non-utility, even counter-utility, of pretending that niche markets are the same as the CNO market, or that ICANN process, and DoC process, is so hosed that any language in the .museum or .coop or .coop agreements can be hijacked by the CNO operators. If the later part is even proximal to being true, then we're wasting our business time "containing" the CN(O) operator(s) and should go back to hardball with ICANN, where we were before we gave up on having any real control over how our fees were increassed, or spent. Eric