Discuss mailing list

[Travis McCrea <teamcoltra AT gmail.com>]

(Pre-Note: I say "Corporation" a lot in the email, this is because thats
what a non-profit organization is... a limited liability corporation --
I don't mean we should create a business)

Just so happens I have gone through this process very recently so I can
answer some questions: 1) In the United States the board of directors
does not need to be US Citizens. 2) There are nations we can incorporate
in which we would not have to worry about The Mariana Islands comes to
mind very quickly as they have very few IP laws, and they are very not
strict on their corporations (from what I understand). Also the same
would apply to many African nations. They will even let you file from
locations outside of their nation... Its the same basic idea that ships
use to get around flying under a US flag (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience )

However, there is another thing to raise: Eve if we DON'T register as a
corporation, the US Government can still come after servers that reside
within the US -- and without corporation status, they will just come
after you as the operator of the T2 and you will have no legal
protection (outside of the constitution which *SHOULD*, in design, be
enough to protect you... lol yeah like thats going to happen).

We also can have individual groups registering in their own countries
(and some use blocks, like registering in the United States covers the
United States and Canada; I bet registering in one country in the UK
would register you across most of the nations on the island).

Even if the government says "shut this down, or we will shut you down"
the corporation says "bring it on"... the worst that can happen is that
a single corporation gets sued by someone and we shut it down and move
the servers to someone else... or they just get shut down. In situations
like this when we know the servers are being taken down by the
government we have the servers re-route all DNS requests to a page that
explains why the server is being taken down, and how they can update
their settings so that they will not have any down time. 

Right now though, if any nation wants to throw a fit over the websites
we resolve (which torrentfinder is now on .geek), each T2 / T1 operator
is at risk of being individually sued or having various bad things
happen to them.

Whats worse, we have no legal way of brining in money to even support
legal costs if that happens. We are honestly sitting on a legal time
bomb.

tl/dr; I don't think having one corporation is a good idea because then
we are centralized... but if we had a conglomerate of corporations then
we would be safe. 

Think: OpenNIC International then "OpenNIC North America" "OpenNIC EU"
"OpenNIC ASIA" I don't know, it works for the Pirate Party. Just food
for thought.

On Tue, 2010-12-21 at 05:59 -0500, Mike wrote:
> Anyone know if the principality of Sealand takes corporate
> registrations?
> 
> On Dec 21, 2010 1:28 AM, "Zach Gibbens" <infocop411 AT gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, if we have a legal presence in the US, we have the same Risks
> as
> > Verisign did, getting a court order to mess with a domain. If we're
> > setup in Australia we're under the ACMA, where we register is a big
> bit
> > of the issue for that reason.
> > 
> > On 12/20/2010 02:22 PM, Hanselka, Alex wrote:
> >> I remember Robin and all of those things... however, times are
> changing and I feel like it is kind of necessary, especially if we
> expect to hold on to our TLDs once TLDs become a free-for-all.
> >> 
> >> Just a thought :)
> >> 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: discuss-bounces AT lists.opennicproject.org
> [mailto:discuss-bounces AT lists.opennicproject.org] On Behalf Of Brian
> Koontz
> >> Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 10:53 AM
> >> To: OpenNIC Discuss
> >> Subject: Re: [opennic-discuss] Non Profit
> >> 
> >> On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 09:32:55AM -0900, teamcoltra AT gmail.com
> wrote:
> >>> The one issues I have with being organized anywhere, is then we
> start 
> >>> becoming centralized. However, with a limited liability
> organization 
> >>> then it reduces the risk to any of our T1/T2 operators... and
> gives us 
> >>> a central place to store money.
> >> 
> >> The founder of OpenNIC, Robin Bandy, was always against the idea of
> organizing OpenNIC into a legal structure for the same reason you
> give. But to add to your list:
> >> 
> >> We can accept donations
> >> We protect the OpenNIC name
> >> We have a collective voice
> >> 
> >> --Brian
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> discuss mailing list
> >> discuss AT lists.opennicproject.org
> >> http://lists.darkdna.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> discuss mailing list
> >> discuss AT lists.opennicproject.org
> >> http://lists.darkdna.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > discuss mailing list
> > discuss AT lists.opennicproject.org
> > http://lists.darkdna.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss AT lists.opennicproject.org
> http://lists.darkdna.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 
Travis McCrea
1(206)552-8728
http://travismccrea.com

The Pirate ideology is like going organic, but free, and doesn't go
moldy as fast.

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