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Username: kayebernard
Date/Time: Sat, October 21, 2000 at 9:01 PM GMT
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.0 using Windows 95
Score: 5
Subject: Support for ".co-op"

Message: 		 

 
        I would also like to support the cause for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to approve the proposal for a .co-op top-level domain.
 
As a member and employee of a rural electric cooperative and also a member of many other cooperatives, I feel it is very important for these organizations to be able to identify themselves with their own unique category as they do not belong in the .com (for-profit business category) or the .org (non-profit category).  Cooperatives need a TLD that identifies their unique business structure, which includes member ownership and control.

Most state and federal laws, establish separate organizational, tax, and other statutes for cooperatives and it would be important to restrict the use of .co-op to only organizations that are truly organized as a cooperative to eliminate other businesses from disguising themselves as a cooperative under this domain.  Consumers need the ability to select businesses that they have come to rely on in the past and reach out to new businesses they wish to patronize in the future in an easily accessible environment.  These businesses that consumers have come to rely on are cooperatives and this is why we need the ability for them to identify these organizations by the TLD .co-op and to also police the accessibility of it.

With 47,000 cooperatives in the U.S. and more than 750,000 cooperatives operating in 92 countries who use “Co-op” as the globally recognized word for cooperative business, doesn’t it seem like the most appropriate way to proceed would be to create the TLD “.co-op” for these organizations?   
     
Please approve the proposal for a .co-op top-level domain.
       
     
     
 

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