Quoting Les Kitchen (ljk@csse.unimelb.edu.au):
Not even that would be an adequate solution. Even trusted individuals can get incapacitated or die. I can imagine setups that protect against that, but they'd be no simpler than our current setup as an incorporated association.
I can comment on that, based on SVLUG's current technical and administrative measures for dealing with domain administration. The current Registrant (owner) of domain svlug.org is 'President, SVLUG'. Quoting from whois: Registrant ID:CORG-154923 Registrant Name:President, SVLUG Registrant Organization:c/o Heather Stern Registrant Street1:903 Harriet Ave Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Campbell Registrant State/Province:CA Registrant Postal Code:95008-5119 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.4158066028 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:president@svlug.org Contact address 'president@svlug.org' is an /etc/aliases entry that resolves to Mailman mailing list volunteers@lists.svlug.org . The domain is registered via Joker.com of Germany, and all key volunteers at SVLUG know the login credentials for the owning Joker.com user, which is via login president@svlug.org . We make sure that, at any given time, around six or seven reliable individuals know how to use those credentials. At the time of the SBAY.ORG debacle, a number of proponents of continued SIG association attempted to assert that 'unincorporated groups cannot own property', which they believed proved that an SVLUG without a corporate umbrella would be somehow unable to own, e.g., an Internet domain. As you see from the above data, that entire line of argument was a pile of humbug (just like the claims of SBAY.ORG incorporation, liability insurance, and the rest). At the time, I was able to point out that hundreds of local troops of the Boy Scouts of America own Internet domains, as has the unicorporated World Science Fiction Society (wsfs.org, thehugoawards.org, worldcon.org) for many decades. WSFS is the group that puts on the World Science Fiction Conventions aka Worldcons every year somewhere in the world (which was last in Melbourne in 2010). By coincidence, I'm leaving for this year's Worldcon in San Antonio, Texas in a few hours. http://www.lonestarcon3.org/ )
Also, thanks for the User-Group-HOWTO. I've learnt a lot from reading it.
Yr. very welcome!