Re: [council] Comments of Report of .org Task Force

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>]

Names Council members:

Louis Touton is a busy man and understandably he 
has not had a chance to follow the discussions and 
reasoning of the ORG Task Force very closely. 
We understood perfectly well that the schema 
proposed for .org did not fit into the pre-existing 
categories ICANN has established. We chose the 
new status "sponsored, unrestricted" because 
there are unique characteristics of .org that make 
it a neat solution to a difficult problem. 

Every objection Louis makes in his letter has been 
anticipated and discussed over the last three months. 
Louis fails to raise any serious practical implementation 
issues. He does not show any possibility of harm that 
might come from following the policy. And he does not 
show that it is impossible to adjust ICANN documents 
to implement the policy. Rather, he simply reiterates a 
rigid, semantic distinction that apparently exists in his 
mind between sponsorship and a lack of prior restrictions 
on registrants. 

I will answer Louis' comments in detail in a subsequent 
message and would be happy to discuss it with elected 
Names Council representatives during the teleconference. 

There may be a few minor ambiguities in the language 
used regarding registrars that could be cleared up, but 
certainly nothing that would prevent us from moving 
forward with the "sponsored, unrestricted" concept.

--MM