A Better WAY FOR .ORG

by AND FOR nonprofits 

The Cooperative Corporation of .ORG Registrants, or CCOR.ORG, is the cooperative organization that seeks to embody and collectively represent the community of .ORG domain name registrants, who will be its members. 

The CCOR.ORG is an organization created by nonprofits for nonprofits to maximize the security and stability of the open and non-commercial Internet. 

Dedicated to an Open Internet

Ensures the technical stability and continuity of operation of the .ORG domain for the benefit of the open Internet community.

Committed to Human Rights

Protects the privacy and human rights of .ORG registrants,  freedom of expression, and platforms for anonymous political speech.

Founded by Charitable Leaders

Dedicated to differentiating the .ORG domain as representative of not-for-profit, public-benefit, and charitable purposes.

Commitments

CCOR.ORG's Articles include the following commitments to .ORG registrants, nonprofits, and the open Internet:  


Download the complete Articles of Incorporation (clean version)

Directors 

Esther Dyson

Esther was the first chair of ICANN’s board of directors and is currently executive founder (full-time) at  Wellville, a 10-year non-profit project focused on health and equitable wellbeing. She is also an active angel investor. 

Katherine Maher

Katherine runs the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization.  Wikipedia is the only dot-org website in the Alexa top 50 most-frequently-visited web sites.

Michael Roberts

Mike led the establishment of Internet2 and was central to the transition of academic networking to the modern Internet. He went on to become ICANN’s founding President.

Marietje Schaake

Marietje served as a Member of the European Parliament (2009-2019) from The Netherlands. She’s now International Policy Director at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and President of the Cyber Peace Institute.

Jeff Ubois

Jeff has been central to a number of non-profits dealing with digital archiving and librarianship, and has built a number of philanthropic programs for digital development.

William Woodcock

Bill is Executive Director of Packet Clearing House (which provided the technical back-end for the dot-org domain from 2004 to 2020), and chairman of the board of Quad9.

Bevil Wooding

Bevil is the Chief Knowledge Officer of Congress WBN, a large faith-based development aid NGO, and is the Caribbean regional manager for the Regional Internet Registry ARIN.

FAQ

Q. Why does this matter so much - what is at risk?

Millions of nonprofits around the world rely on dot-org to help them provide critical health, infrastructure, human rights, freedom of the press, advocacy and fundraising services. Our sole focus is developing a solution for dot-org that serves the interests of the dot-org registrants and the public.

Q. What principles are involved here? 

We stand behind the principle of a dot-org domain run solely in the interests of its most important stakeholder group, the world’s nonprofits.. This is the best way to ensure the long-term, stable and secure operation of .ORG. 

Q. Are you against commercial Internet operations in a general sense?

No. There are many solutions suited to commercially driven Internet operations. We support a vibrant private sector Internet. The .ORG domain is a unique infrastructure that was originally intended to be run in the interests of non-commercial Internet users. We support maintaining that status.

Q. What are you asking for? 

We believe that the best way to transition the dot-org domain is to undertake a full, open, deliberative, community process consistent with the best current practices of the global Internet community. 

Q. Why do you believe a cooperative will help all dot-org registrants?

The co-operative model is simple and proven. It is used by some of the world’s largest top-level domains, including dot-de, the country code top-level domain for Germany. It is a proven means to ensure dot-org stability and good governance in alignment with Internet and nonprofit good practices. 

Q. How would the cooperative fund common infrastructure?

The cooperative is committed to redistributing up to 25% of annual revenues to support an open Internet and key nonprofit Internet infrastructure. This includes specific commitments to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and to nonprofit Domain Name System Root Server Operators as well as, optionally, the Internet Governance Forum, chapters of the Internet Society, and other such deserving organizations and projects as may be serving the Internet’s users and infrastructure in a public-benefit manner.

Q. What’s to stop the CCOR.ORG from spending .ORG revenue on other purposes?

Having Article V, Prohibited Activities in the Articles, “Notwithstanding any other provision of these articles, this Corporation shall not, except to an insubstantial degree, engage in any activities or exercise any powers that are not in furtherance of the specific purposes of this Corporation” means that the CCOR.ORG is prohibited by California law from engaging in or spending .ORG revenue on other purposes. The CCOR.ORG is legally bound to prioritize distributing savings to .ORG registrants over anything outside of its other enumerated Purposes.

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