That Was Not a CQ, That Was a Concern

Our guest columnists currently reside in a Manhattan park.

46.1.2

Mic Check! Im Drew from internet. We would like to propose tonight the purchase of occupywallstreet.net for the use of all of us. It is time sensitive because the person who owns it desperately wants to sell it and will sell it to anybody but we have put a stop on that for the day. I realize that this is a weird situation, but we would rather that you own it than say the Koch brotherss. The amount is $8,000. Just so everyone knows, we are about to take a temp check, not on the proposal, but on having it being addressed now based on the time situation.

F: (temp check mixed)

46.1.3 Clarifying Questions

F: Ok, what I’d like to do is open it up about the time concerns with this issue. Please express concerns, stack is open

Clarifying Question: This is to discuss the proposal being spoke about tonight right?

A: correct, just to address the proposal tonight

F: While taking stack, I’d like to fill everyone in that after the agenda we will move to working group report backs and general announcements

CQ: Where is the money coming from, and how much is in that place

A: A quick POP, we will flush this out, so we all know, we are taking stack to make sure we are cool with addressing this proposal period

F: We are taking a temp check because it falls in a grey area of the 24 advance notice for agenda items. The 24 hour period was consented on last week.

Q: Im concerned that without the review period, we won’t have a chance to properly review the proposal and I’m curious what the internet working group thinks the odds are that it will be purchased by someone else by tomorrow given that it hasn’t been purchased before now.

A: The reason that this is time sensitive is quite serendipitous. We came to the conclusion that we needed to purchase a web domain such as this one very recently, and also very recently, a gentlemen in Florida who had the ownership of this domain put it online for sale. So it has not been up online all this time unbought.

46.1.4

Im Jake from the internet working group I spoke with the seller for several hours last night on the phone. He is very desperate to sell this domain because of his current financial situation. If we do not move to buy this domain ourselves he will pursue selling it to other people.

F: Another temperate check about discussing this proposal tonight? (temp check positive)

F: What it looks to me is that we can begin this discussion. Id like to open stack for CQ about this proposal.

Internet: The outward facing site that people believe represents this park is not in the GA’s control. The occupy wall st sites are run in solidarity by an affinity group and also Adbusters, two separate site. The internet working group feels that it is very important to have an outward facing site that is accountable to people here in the General Assembly. Nycga.net is a lovely tool for the intercommunication. We feel occupywallstreet.net is a wonderful platform to outwardly express whats going on.

46.1.5

Internet: This proposal has been seen by Finance and they support it as an investment in the future of this movement and this occupation. We cannot understate the importance of protection of our online identity. This means everything to this movement and this occupation. For some of you, who are not as familiar with domain name pricing, allow me to offer a point of reference. 1 hour ago I received a phone call from a trademark attorney. One of her clients wanted to sell us the domain name occupy.com for $150,000. In that context, I ask that you recognize that $8,000 is not a high price for this domain name.

One last thing, this domain will be legally owned by the unincorporated organization known as Occupy Wall St. and will not belong to a single individual, but all of us collectively.

46.1.6

F: So now stack for CQ is open, I have a few names on stack already, Stacy will be first, Alex, Zellig, and Jeff are on stack

46.1.7

Stacy: I have a couple questions, the first is. Who exactly currently owns this domain and how and when did they purchase it.

A from Internet: I can address this. The owner is a gentlemen named Mark R. Elsis. He is a former NY’er and lives currently in Florida. For 35 years he has been buying domain names and generally using them for progressive purposes. He bought this domain name months ago at the beginning of this movement. Until now, nothing has been developed there. It leads to a blank white page.

Q: My other question is, is there an alternative website that we could purchase that would be cheaper and equally representative because there are a lot of domains that could exist. I want to make sure that we are purchasing the most cost effective site.

A: Its a balancing act between the power of the name and the price. At a certain point you’ll have to trust the judgement and our intention to do whats best for the movement. We have considered many other options which would be equally high profile, they are currently controlled by affinity groups or Adbusters. There is one other domain name that could be used and we hope to acquire this one for little or no cost. These domains will work together to form the outward facing web presence of this occupation.

46.1.8

Alex CQ: I have a couple clarifications. So occupywallstreet.com is not owned by us?

A: Correct

Alex: Is $8,000 the price he is asking for or our counter offer.

A: The price he was asking was $10000, last night I negotiated, lowering it to $8,000 plus an immediate 10% deposit which I put on my personal card last night so he would take the domain off the market andso we would have a chance to present this proposal tonight

Alex: Is it under you personal opinion that this is the best solution to our problem?

A: Yes

46.1.9

Zellig CQ: My ? is who is the affinity group and why won’t Adbusters and the affinity groups give the control of the other websites to us for free?

A: I’ve been told that we are running a little off topic but the short answer is that both the affinity group and Adbusters have a different view of where they want the website to go. As some background the internet working group has had many mediated conversations with the affinity group.

F: Next up Jeff

46.1.10

Jeff: Can you discuss whether you sought other offers other than the $150,000.

A: Allow me to clarify, we are not suggesting that we purchase occupywallstreet.net for $150,000. That was to provide perspective for the worth of occupywallst.net.

Jeff: Do you have other references for prices that would fit your purpose?

A: occupywallst.org in addition to the traffic it generates is worth well over $150,000

Jeff: What is your point of reference for that price?

A; Our discussion with our affinity group disclosed what they thought it was worth

Jeff: Have you sought other owners of websites to see if you would like to buy theirs instead to see what their price would be?

A: As mentioned earlier, there is one other domain that we would also like to discuss with the owner, which we hope to get for very cheap or free because of the owners solidarity with the movement. All other domains we see as sufficiently high profile are controlled by the affinity group or Adbusters.

46.1.11

Michael: I just wonder did you look into other top level domains like .us, .info, etc.?

A: I t is our belief that net is our best option to be sufficiently high profile and to exist to our existing site nycga.net and another domain that we hope to develop in the future, occupy.net

F: Next up, lawrence

46.1.12

Lawrence: My question relates to the name under which this will be registered. I agree with the need to secure our online identity, the existing convention flowing from occupywallst.org is this entity is the NYC General Assembly, and thats not the name under which this is being registered. Please illuminate the process by which it will be named.

A: We had nothing to do with the formation of that entity. It was offered to us by the financial working group. We do believe that this GA and this occupation in Liberty Plaza should be represented by the term occupy wall st, because we are so close to WS. We have also had many people form other occupations have conveyed their confusion that occupywallst.org doesn’t represent this occupation in an official capacity.

F: We would like to close stack. Next up Katie

46.1.13

Katie: My question is similar to my previous one. Can we just get some idea what $8,000 means to us? What is the percentage of what we have etc.

A: Today financed released a report of all the money garnished over the past time. Its on our website nycga.net under bulletin. Is there someone from Finance that can quickly address this question?

F: Based on finances release at last friday GA, I can address this with very rough numbers. So far the GA general fund has raised somewhere above $450,000. We have spent somewhere around $60,000

F: Next up Tim!

46.1.14

Tim: It was my understanding that the PR working group runs occupywallst.org. Is that not true?

A: Members of the affinity group work in PR. There is solidarity between the website, the affinity group, the GA, and the working groups.

Tim: So are we sure that we are all agreed that occupywallst is the term we should use to refer to this occupation or the whole movement. Do we risk co-opting the movement ourselves by continuing to call ourselves occupy wall st?

POP from F: That was not a CQ that was a concern. We will open the floor for concerns soon

F: Speaking of which, we have closed the stack, next is Rocky

46.1.15

Rocky: How can we incorporate a 501c-3 which will give us a .org website

A: .org websites are not available, and the question of whether or not we are a 501c-3 is not under our jurisdiction

POI from Finance:

We have fiscal sponsorship for a 501c-3, we could get it, but other people already beat us to it

POI from Internet: There is no relationship between being a 501c-3 and registering a .org. Anyone at all can get a .org website

46.1.16 Concerns

F: We are now opening stack for concerns. If you want to get on stack, raise your hand

Internet: To respond to the previous concern, we don’t get to chose how people describe what we are doing. Anecdotal info from the internet working groups shows that people from other occupations view the term occupy wall st. as referring to us here. They have also said that they see what we do here as the thought leadership of the movement. How we use that, whether we co-opt anything, isn’t determined by what domain name we have, but by how we act as a group in solidarity with all the other individuals across the world.

F: First on stack, B

46.1.17

B: When you said that there was another website domain, correct me if Im wrong, but $150,000,000

A: The other domain was quoted at $150,000

B: Is that from them being able to advertise, and, if …would you guys be opposed to advertise to reimburse the $8,000, for companies that we support

A: we would only do that with the consensus of the GA, a strong presence means that our donation link gets clicked on, which means thats where our money comes from. It could be argued that a strong forward facing website will create donations greater than what we are asking for in a matter of minutes

F: Are there any more concerns, I would like to close stack? (no more)

46.1.18

Daniel: My concern, just to address it to the assembly, in the past when dealing with money, there has been a lot of concern over who our money is going to. It sounds to me that we are giving $8,000 to someone who purchased the domain name simply to profit off of our movement. If he is really willing to help our movement, I don’t see why he bought it and is now demanding $8,000 from us so that we may use it

A: It is entirely possible that this gentlemen has pretended to be in solidarity, pretended to be in economic strife, just for money. However he is offering it to us when he could get much more for it.

46.1.19

Adam: About 6 years ago a group I was involved with purchased a domain called freegan.info. .org .com and .net were already taken, but we got a lot of media attention, and we put our less favorable domain out through all of our media. If you go to google and look up freegan, you will find freegan.info. If you do a good job promoting your site, it doesn’t matter what letters are after the .

F: Stack is now closed for concerns. Internet wants to respond

Internet: I hear your concern, and we hope to get as many high profile domains to point to this site as possible We should point out that if we do not buy it, someone could buy this domain to use against us.

F: We have about 10 minutes left to discuss this topic in total, keep that in mind. With that in mind, I d like to open up stack for quick friendly amendments.

46.1.20

F: Friendly Amendments (FA)

FA proposal: Can we amend the proposal to address the issue of if we ever address the issue of nomenclature of the movement that we allow that site to be open for other uses in the future, potentially movement wide issues.

A: As the domain will be owned by the GA, they can do with it, you can do with it, what you wish

Interruption from GkM from Picture the Homeless: Id like to say that picture the homeless is picturethehomeless.org and if you want to connect with picture the homeless, then do so.

F: Thanks for the announcement, but thats not related to the proposal being discussed.

F: Id like to close stack fro FA

46.1.21

FA proposal: I’d like to suggest, maybe this in alternate proposal actually, that before we consider buying this domain, we test for consensus whether that as a GA, requesting the other website from the affinity group, asking if the affinity group would give us the domain name in good faith. That may be different coming form the GA as opposed to coming from the internet working group.

POI: On Saturday at the GA we proposed almost the same proposal with the same language…it was rejected. After mediated conversation with the affinity group, we agreed that this would be the best step

F: With that in mind I would like to begin the process of testing for consensus

F: Please restate the proposal first

46.1.22

Internet: The internet working group would like $8,000 to purchase a domain occupywallstreet.net on behalf of the NYC GA.

Can we get a temperature check? (mostly positive, a few negative and neutral)

F: So we have a few sad hands and some neutral. Are there concerns from those people that have not been addressed.

46.1.23

Concern: Is the idea to get all of the OWS domains, to prevent people from coopting our message by registering those domains in bad faith?

A:Our objective is to have an outward facing site that people understand that is owned, operated and accountable to the NYCGA

46.1.24

Q:Do we have any occupy wall street domains?

A:no.

46.1.25

Q: Can we get an OWS domain that doesn’t $8000, for example, a .info or a hyphenated domain?

A:It may very well be possible that we could, however, this is a unique opportunity, and also, those other domains could very well cost money.

Thank you.

46.1.26

Q:I’m still concerned that there’s more going on here than I quite understand. If the PR team is using occupywallstreet.org, even if it doesn’t own it, why are we competing with them and using the same name, when there are arguably better names for this GA?

A:The outside world, for a large part, when they hear OWS, they think of this protest here in Liberty Plaza. The first line on the OWS wikipedia page says that the OWS movement is an ongoing protest here. To your second point, the affinity group would like to use their website for broader movements, news, and stuff. They are not accountable, and do not have to do anything that we’d ask them to. A good for instance, is the principles of solidarity. They would not post those on the website, even though it was consensed on by the GA. We feel that it’s best to let them do their thing in solidarity and that us, to have a place to put official outward-facing news, information, etc.

F: Time check: our time is up to discuss this topic. We’re going to move on to blocks.

F: Temp check on this proposal. (mostly positive, similar to previous temp check)

46.1.27

F: Are there any blocks to this proposal?

F: One block. Please speak to your block

Block: I feel that we should have a different name and this should be called the Real Party. We’re not the Democrat Party, we’re not the Republican party, we’re not the Tea Party.

F: POP. Right now we’re talking about buying a domain name for OWS. What you’re suggesting is probably a different proposal entirely.

F: Are you retaining your block?

A: No.

46.1.28 Consensus

F: we have reached consensus! [cheers and applause]

Occupy Wall Street Pays $8,000 for a Home on the Web [WSJ]