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Username: Toby Johnson
Date/Time: Wed, November 15, 2000 at 6:50 PM GMT
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.5 using Windows NT 4.0
Score: 5
Subject: .co-op

Message:
 

 
        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
     
     

 


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