I think that the proposed agreement with VeriSign should foreclose the prospect of
closing the .org domain in any way. Not only are there vested expectations
among those who registered -- indeed, were encouraged to register by NSI when it
was the only registry for open gTLDs -- but RFC 1591 specifically contemplated the
.org would be open: from http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/computing/internet/rfc/rfc1591.txt
-
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for
organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some
non-
government organizations may fit here.
Instead
of postponing a decision about .org to a later consensus notice-and-comment process,
the commitment should be made now to keep it open; there's always a way, as suggested
elsewhere in this forum, to create a .npc TLD for non-profit corporations.
But to seize any existing registrations as they come up for renewal because they
no longer retroactively meet new criteria for .org inclusion seems unfair, and a
windfall to whomever could later claim the name (and its traffic) once it had been
seized. ...JZ