Dear ICANN,I think one of the more touching posts
on this board is the one that mentions that the ICA (International Co-operative Alliance)
is well-established. That's a nice understatement for a world-wide organisation founded
in 1895, with 750 million members! It is one of the few to have survived wars hot
and cold, and is still helping people in all continents to achieve decent livelihoods.
The
co-operative principles are applicable in so many circumstances, and deserve to be
recognised and recognisable as unique across the Internet. If they are not, the risk
is that we are reduced to using a label which is either purely commercial (.com)
or suggests a voluntary asociation (.org) - both of which miss the point. Which is
that of economic endeavour for mutual benefit. It's worth mentioning that in advanced
economies, the co-operative, mutual and non-profit sectors add up to 5-7% of turnover
and rather more of employment (The Emerging Sector, study led by Johns Hopkins University
in 1995 and continuing).
The quasi-permanence, scale and global social importance
of the co-operative movement certainly, in my view, merit the allocation of a top
level domain, and I would urge ICANN to do this.
Toby Johnson