[LINK] PIR seeking support for new non-profit Tld

[Darrell Burkey]

Wearing my President of Computing Assistance Support and Education hat 
(see http://www.case.org.au) I'd like to ask if anyone has views or 
information regarding a Melbourne consulting company which is contacting
 Australian non profits on behalf of the Public Interest Registry who 
currently manage the .ORG domain space, or about the issue of 
establishing a new domain name for non-profit organisations.



They are asking Australian non-profit organisations to sign a letter of 
support which will be used to petition ICANN for a new gTLD of .ngo. 
Their main rationale appears to be the statement that this will be a 
closed gTLD that only non-profit organisations will be allowed to use. 



I have spent many years educating Australian non-profits about the 
benefits of using the Australian domain name space and the value of 
identifying as .org.au and .asn.au against the advice of many 'expert' 
marketing firms who insist that they should register in .com for the 
best exposure and higher validity, whatever that means. 



So I'm a bit surprised that when we essentially have two closed domain 
name spaces here in Australia that a US firm would hire a local 
marketing firm to seek support for a domain that seems to be to be 
pointless. I doubt very much that ICANN is going to change the model of 
domain names to suit their need for a closed domain space but even if 
they do I don't see how it would be more influential or credible than 
the .au space for Australian non-profits.



I'm sure people here have more experience in these matters than myself 
and I'd really appreciate some feedback or hard research that would be 
useful in drafting a public response to the many non-profit 
organisations that CASE works with.



I have participated on several auDA domain name policy panels and I've 
had an off the record discussion with them about this and I've also 
contacted Felton Communications in Melbourne to discuss the matter with 
them. If anyone has contacts with PIR that would be useful as well.



Thanks.



For background see:



Fenton Communication in Melbourne:



http://www.fenton.com.au/news/20/38/Aussie-non-profits-to-benefit-from-proposed-NGO-domain/d,news_detail/



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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Darrell Burkey
Web Transformation Project Team Leader
UNIX Systems Administrator
College of Asia & the Pacific
Australian National University
Ph: (02) 6125 4160