Re: [ga-org] First Ten Policy Questions

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2001-06-10 22:24:18 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>(throwing a curve ball into the discussion: would it be 
>interesting to discuss a scheme whereby the fees for .com would be 
>higher than for NSI, but where documented not-for-profit 
>organizations got a very low fee? carrot rather than 
>stick....?...probably unreasonable because just glancing at the 
>documentation of non-profit status would cost far more than 
>registering the domain....)

How about putting the carrot and the stick into the dispute 
resolution policy, and into the fees?

First of all, we probably all agree that .org isn't the most popular 
TLD for the typical "dotCOM" - in fact, it seems that .org as, so 
far, mostly been attracting individuals and "organizations" of all 
kinds.  That is, even without being chartered, .org is kind of a 
de facto non-profit TLD.

Now, instead of introducing a difficult, complex and expensive 
policy to define who may qualify for .org and who may not do so, I'd 
suggest to think about a dispute resolution policy which makes it 
unfavorable for for-profit organizations.  Instead of checking a 
policy for every registrant, just checkt it in the case of dispute.

Such a policy could, perhaps, be developed along these very, very 
rough lines:

- Businesses may only use the dispute resolution policy in order to 
   get the domain of other businesses removed (!) in case of bad 
   faith.

- Not-for-profits (or individuals) may use the dispute resolution 
   policy to get any domain in case of bad faith.  One may think 
   about making it easier to get a businesse's domain name than 
   another not-for-profit's or an individual's.

Rationale in terms of examples: This should mean that the McDonalds' 
clan's domain could continue to be mcdonalds.org, and that the 
hamburger chain couldn't do anything about it according to the 
policy.  It should also mean that Westdeutscher Rundfunk (warning: 
this is a public broadcasting institution, so it doesn't qualify 
precisely as a business - work for lawyers, I'd suppose) can't go 
for wdr.org when that's an individual's domain composed of his 
initials. 

It should also mean that Greenpeace can easily get greepeace.org 
when it's squatted upon by Esso.

What do you think?

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        http://log.does-not-exist.org/
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