
Cooperative Corporation of Dot-Org Registrants - miles
https://www.ccor.org
======
jlgaddis
This sounds like exactly what is needed right now!

I'm particularly impressed with the Board of Directors.

From "Charitable Web Leaders Launch Cooperative Alternative for .ORG Domain"
[0]:

> _Some of the world’s best known charitable web leaders have created a new
> cooperative that includes all .ORG registrants. The articles of
> incorporation were filed on January 6, 2020._

> _Leaders from Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia.org; Internet
> Archive, which runs archive.org; Mozilla Foundation, which runs the Firefox
> web browser; and Packet Clearing House, are among those who supported the
> effort to create the Cooperative Corporation for .ORG Registrants (CCOR).
> CCOR is designed as a viable alternative to selling the dot-org domain to
> private equity firm Ethos Capital._

\---

[0]: [https://medium.com/@ccor/charitable-web-leaders-launch-
coope...](https://medium.com/@ccor/charitable-web-leaders-launch-cooperative-
alternative-for-org-domain-769b61b40de2)

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scandox
I get that something has been setup and that some serious heads are involved
but with respect to ownership / control of the .org tld what is being proposed
if anything?

Or is this simply a representative organisation to protect the interests of
domain holders?

Sorry if these are dumb questions.

~~~
macintux
Not dumb at all. As best as I can interpret from the FAQ they’re simply
looking for a transparent process around any ownership change, at least for
now.

~~~
brandur
Yep, it's not totally clear yet from their website.

My personal hypothesis is that given an alternative recipient for the .org
registry that's better in every respect except for the amount of money they're
able to pour into the pockets of ICANN / Internet Society (ISOC), it'll be
more difficult for these parties to pretend that the .org sale is about
anything except graft.

As we've see from previously, morally flexible members of these organizations
(e.g. Richard Barnes [1]) have claimed that the sale of .org to Ethos is
really in the interest of the public good! As details continue to come to
light, these arguments are going to get continually more difficult to make.

I'm not sure it's realistic the CCOR succeeds in gaining control of .org
(although fingers crossed, it sounds like they'd be a far better than owner
than ISOC or Ethos), but worst case, they'll force some additional
transparency into the process.

\---

[1]
[http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_o...](http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_org/)

~~~
mikeliys
"morally flexible" \- cute phrase :) I like it.

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tbirdz
Hypothetically speaking, what would be the best way to handle voting rights
and distribution of power in a domain registrant coop?

Does every domain holder have the same amount voting power, like in a
democracy, or do large orgs like Mozilla or Wikimedia get proportionally more
votes like large shareholders in corporations do? And if we allocate votes
based on stakes invested, what would stop someone from buying their way in and
taking over the same way it happened with PIR?

~~~
nikitaga
Democracy is called that because every vote is a person. People are finite,
you can't just add more whenever you feel like it.

Voting of shareholders of a company can still be called a democracy because
the amount of shares – what's weighing the votes – is finite.

But the supply of .org domain names is effectively infinite, and so any
"voting" weighed by domain names would just become a bidding contest.

There are only like 10 million .org domain names. At this rate it will cost
just a bit more than $100 million to pass any decision requiring a simple
majority, and a bit more if a supermajority is required. This is notably
cheaper than the $1.3B acquisition price.

\---

If we want to entrench status quo, one solution is to require broad consensus
of a sizeable but finite number of large players representing customers
including the ones you mentioned.

~~~
bwoodcock
You could create a corporation with the rules (and problems) that you’re
proposing, but in a cooperative the rules are fixed: one vote per
organization. Your family .ORG domain gets the same one vote as Microsoft.ORG,
as your kids’ soccer league, as the church down the street, regardless of how
many domains they register.

Obviously a bad actor could try to game the system by pretending to be
multiple organizations, but it wouldn’t buy them anything, because board
members don’t have any rights that non-board-members don’t have, and the
rights of the members to their financial interests are also guaranteed under
law... the bird couldn’t, for instance, vote to pay themselves.

~~~
nitrogen
Is there a way to distinguish one organization registering 100000 domains
(possibly using sub-entities) to get 100000 votes versus 100000 real
separately controlled organizations?

Would controlling a large number of votes that way give them some kind of
advantage?

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hkt
Absolutely delighted with this. The internet needs more co-operatives and it
would be an unadulterated joy to see a common tld taken into co-operative
ownership in this way, especially by such a competent group of people.

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unix2lin
From their commitments:

> Differentiate the dot-org domain as representative of not-for-profit,
> public-benefit, and charitable purposes, distinct from the intended purposes
> of other domains.

Does that mean we won't be able to register .org for personal website/blogs?

~~~
techsupporter
I'm not getting that impression. I own a .org that's neither commercial nor
non-commercial; it's for my personal use and has been for the more than two
decades I've owned it. Why in .org? Because .org has historically been where
"not a business or one of the other domain types" has fallen.

The group's FAQ says .org was "originally intended to be run in the interests
of non-commercial Internet users," which is true and, in my view, doesn't
exclude individuals, even those who want to use a .org for commercial
purposes. I read that statement as "we will prioritize the needs of the 'core'
of .org users but everyone is welcome."

I would _strongly_ doubt that people like Esther Dyson, Michael Roberts, and
Katherine Maher got into this group to take .org domains away from individuals
or to restrict individuals from using .org. Quite the opposite, I imagine;
they, in my bet, want to keep it as it is now.

~~~
bwoodcock
Exactly.

If any of you want to suggest language that you feel better conveys the goal,
please propose it. We’d like to make the charter as clear and unambiguous as
possible.

~~~
nitrogen
I've seen companies that use their name in .com for external communication,
but also own a .org for internal email addresses. How would those be affected?

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crawfordcomeaux
My biggest caution here is to establish early on a culture of solidarity, not
charity, in the foundational values of the organization. Same goes for
community-based human-centered design, where those with power are facilitating
the design process for whatever the users decide are their problems and
appropriate solutions.

Otherwise, codependency and hierarchy are allowed to flourish.

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walshemj
Don't actually see any one from the National Cooperative Business Association
or a director from a coop background.

I hope they are not going down again the route of limiting it to purely
American style non profits - which in the past would have excluded the red
cross and people like JWZ

~~~
kerkeslager
In what style is JWZ a nonprofit?

~~~
walshemj
His email is jwz@jwz.org an has been for decades

~~~
kerkeslager
I know--I'm subscribed to his blog's RSS.

Are you arguing that we shouldn't limit .org to nonprofits at all? Or that we
shouldn't limit .org to American-style nonprofits?

