I have serious concerns about new rules being instated on who can own a .org domain.
While I agree in principle that for-profit ventures should possibly be excluded,
those rules have not been enforced for nearly six years - years of explosive expansion.
Many of us have put personal sites in the org TLD, because they didn't fit well in
commercial (which I am not as a person) or network (nor am I personally a network
:). While I do also hold .com and .net domains, I've started a rather successful
.org domain that is strictly non-profit, but is only informally at best an organization
- we're just a collection of four people who have no official structure or rules,
just a concern for keeping the site operating within its charter. We have no
intention of becoming a non-profit corporation (too much legalwork, paperwork - we
have no source of income off the site and pay for it out of our own pockets), and
are offended and concerned that ICANN would even consider changing the rules in such
a way as to possibly destroy all the work we've done in promoting the thing.
Likewise, with domain squatters overrunning the .com and .net domains, it's often
very hard to find an affordable domain anymore, and .org is still a bit more of an
open playing field for those of us who are not in any way a business or corporate
entity. Contrary to what some would like to believe, private individuals still
do have their own servers/bandwidth/websites/internet services, and some of us really
do just do it because we enjoy it. It's unreasonable to make us all jump through
all sorts of legal hurdles (such as incorporating as a non-profit, which many of
us can't afford) just to keep our domains pointed at websites and other services
we've worked many long hours to build up. NDHolmes maverick@drgw.net http://www.drgw.net http://www.railarc.org
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