Hi,
Re the Trust's plenary slides (I was not in Berlin):
I have an allergy to modifying the Trust Agreement unless there's an
overwhelming reason to do so. It was a very hard-won piece of text.
Issue #1
We have recently been asked permission to
republish the TAO with a creative commons
license, but unfortunately the current trust
agreement does not give the trustees the
rights to do this
It doesn't? You have the right to license "existing and future
intellectual property" according to clause 2.1 of the Trust Agreement.
Is there some particular property of the CC license that causes a
problem?
Issue #2
We cannot currently accept physical assets
like hardware donations into the trust
Once accepted into the trust, we would be unable
to dispose of these items in the future if they are
identified as no longer being needed
It was definitely intended that the Trust would only handle
intellectual property, and that ISOC on behalf of IASA would handle
money and material property. Why change this?
(I'm not quite sure why the Trust Agreement included the words
"and other property" in the first place. It was there from a very
early draft and was never discussed, as far as I can tell from my
2005 email archive.)
Issue #3
Once a domain name or trademark is
registered by the trust, it cannot be
abandoned even if it is no longer needed
We must maintain these in perpetuity
IANAL, but it isn't clear to me that clause 9.4 forces you to do this.
It requires you to "take reasonable steps" and to file applications "as
the Trustees deem necessary in order to maintain and protect the Trust
Assets." If you decide (and minute) that it isn't reasonable or necessary
to maintain veryolddomainname.org, where's the crime?
Brian