Comments on .Coop Renewal

["Hazen, Paul" <PHazen@xxxxxxxxx>]

ICANN has extended the comment period on the renewal of the .coop
Sponsored TLD Agreement to allow the Internet community time for
additional input on the agreement.  DotCooperation LLC, the Sponsor of
the .coop gTLD, would like to take this opportunity to note our desire
to continue to serve the worldwide cooperative community by providing
the means for co-ops everywhere to promote their cooperative identity on
the Internet.

 

DotCoop is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Cooperative
Business Association, the cross-sector association of cooperatives and
cooperative organizations in the United States.  Through comprehensive
education, co-op development, communications, public policy, member
services, and international development programs, NCBA has helped co-ops
for more than 90 years to strengthen their businesses so they can better
serve their members. It also provides a strong, unified voice for
cooperatives to the U.S. government.  

 

NCBA saw an opportunity in 2000 to further strengthen cooperative
businesses in the United States and around the world by proposing an
Internet domain solely for cooperatives.  In cooperation with the
International Cooperative Alliance and with the support of a number of
leading cooperatives and cooperative organizations globally, NCBA was
pleased to be able to help the cooperative community to gain the means
to promote our cooperative identity on the Internet.

 

Since the .coop domain went live in January 2002, dotCoop has worked to
meet the expectations of our .coop registrants for a stable and
responsive technical environment as well as ensuring the value of their
domains through a constantly refined verification process.  We continue
to interpret our ICANN Charter strictly and respond quickly to any
concerns by registrants or other members of the community to eligibility
inquiries.

 

As part of the original contract certain authorities were delegated to
dotCoop to allow us to potentially establish processes and services that
would be in line with the Cooperative Principles included in our
Charter.  For example, dotCoop has provided a directory of .coop domains
that supports the seventh cooperative principle - Concern for Community.


 

In general, these delegated responsibilities are functional in nature
and do not touch on the security and stability of the Internet.  Our
technical responsibilities are in line with all registries, as they
should be.  DotCoop has complied with all Consensus Policies and where
we were exempted, we have actually worked to provide our registrants
additional services that are possible because of our initial requirement
of verification.  We would not have wanted to insist that other
registries offer these services to registrars and their registrants but
since this is possible, we prefer to offer the service.  This is
documented on the www.nic.coop <http://www.nic.coop/>  site.

 

DotCoop and our registry operator worked diligently to implement the new
EPP server for registry maintenance and work with our registrars to
facilitate testing so that we could continue to stay aligned with
current software as needed in potential consensus policies.  We
anticipate that we would work within the standard consensus policy
development process and use the process to the best of our ability to
address the needs and concerns of the registry and of the cooperative
community.  However, in looking at the potential of a large effort to
address something that might not be encountered within .coop because of
our verification requirements or the number of domains we support, we
thought it appropriate to define a way to present a request to ICANN for
a specific exemption.  

 

As noted by ICANN, this would be subject to review, a comment period and
ICANN Board approval.  Since the effort involved in requesting any such
exemption would not be trivial, these would clearly only be used for
significant items of concern to dotCoop and to the cooperative
community.  

 

Another reason that dotCoop would only ask for exemptions in rare cases
would be that we would not want to confuse our registrants or create
issues for our registrars.  Our registrants want .coop domains to
operate just like all other domains, so it is only to our benefit to be
compliant with standard processes in most instances.  We continue to
want to work with any ICANN-accredited registrar to give more
registration and services options to our registrants and so again, we
would not want to create issues for our current or prospective
registrars by requiring custom software or procedures.  That would
definitely not be in the interest of dotCoop or our community.

 

To summarize, I would like to make clear that dotCoop remains committed
to its cooperative community as well as the ICANN community and the
general Internet community.  We will continue to work within the
processes that have been developed to provide for the security and
stability of the Internet and to meet the expectations of the individual
registrants as well.  We feel that the proposed contract provides this
and that the clause that provides for exemption gives dotCoop the
potential to better serve their community through conserving resources
or by ensuring that cooperatives principles are not compromised within
the broader business environment.

 

Yours in cooperation, 

 
Paul Hazen
President and CEO
DotCooperation LLC
1401 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC  20005
 
 
.Coop, the new Internet domain exclusively for cooperatives!
For more information, go to www.nic.coop <http://www.nic.coop>