[ncdnhc-discuss] [Fwd: [council] Comments of Report of .org Task Force]

[Jefsey Morfin]

Dear Vany,
Thank you for your copying of Louis Touton's analysis. In this document 
Louis demonstrates his usual capacity for precise and thoughtful analysis. 
Well done!

There are only two small things he forgot. To copy the NCDNHC and the 
possibility that the inadequation of the .org TF document with his 
"sponsored TLD" concept is only showing the inadequacy of the concept. No 
one can be totally perfect.
Jefsey


On 07:22 10/12/01, Nilda Vany Martinez Grajales said:
>Hi to all: FYI.
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: [council] Comments of Report of .org Task Force
>Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2001 13:24:12 -0800
>From: Louis Touton <touton at icann.org>
>Reply-To: touton at icann.org
>Organization: ICANN
>To: council at dnso.org
>
>To the Names Council:
>
>On 1 December, the .org Names Council Task Force submitted its report
>for consideration by the Names Council at its 13 December meeting.
>Although the report clearly represents hard work of bringing together
>apparently diverse viewpoints, the resulting proposals include some
>features that raise significant concerns.  The attached Adobe Acrobat
>(.pdf) file discusses those concerns.  For those unable to read Acrobat
>files, the text is copied (in somewhat harder-to-read format) at the
>bottom of this message.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Louis Touton
>
>==================================================================
>
>To the Names Council:
>
>On 1 December 2001, a "Final Report of the ORG Divestiture Task Force"
>was submitted for consideration at the 13 December 2001 Names Council
>teleconference.  The report raises significant practical and legal
>concerns regarding (a) what policy recommendations are intended by the
>report and (b) whether the policy recommendations could be implemented
>in a manner that is practical and fulfills fundamental aspects of
>ICANN's mission.
>
>As submitted, the report proposes a wholly new kind of TLD:  a sponsored
>yet unrestricted TLD.  This aspect of the report leads to a series of
>inconsistencies that in turn lead to ambiguities and irreconcilable
>conflicts in the policies being recommended.  There are inherent
>conflicts between the notions of sponsored and unrestricted that make it
>extraordinarily cumbersome - if not impossible - for both concepts to
>apply to the same situation. Attempting coexistence would present
>significant problems that I believe will require complicated (and
>possibly unworkable) elaborations, augmentations, and revisions.  If
>corrective measures are not taken at the DNSO level now, there is a
>significant danger that either (a) corrections will be required through
>policy revisions at the Board level or in the implementation process or
>(b) the .org transition from VeriSign will be delayed as clarifying and
>additional policy recommendations are sought from the Names Council.
>
>In this document, I will attempt to provide you with the background as
>to why the concepts of sponsorship and unrestricted do not work
>together.
>
>I.  Nature of and Justification for the Sponsored TLD Concept.  First it
>is helpful to understand the details of the "sponsorship" idea that has
>developed over the past two years.  The fundamental characteristic of a
>"sponsored" TLD is that it has a Sponsor to which ICANN delegates a
>portion - but not all - of ICANN's policy-formulation responsibility.
>This delegation is made on the premise that ICANN's mission of
>developing DNS policies through consensus-based processes involving all
>affected parties can best be done, in the case of TLDs with registration
>policies limited to a well-defined community, by a community-based
>organization that represents the spectrum of interests of the
>registrants and others in the community who may be affected.  The
>delegation is not simply a matter of granting the customary discretion
>to the registry operator regarding how to run its business; it is a
>delegation of ICANN's responsibilty to act in a way that represents all
>the affected registrants.
>
>As recently noted in my analysis of objections to the .aero agreement
><http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/aero/report-aero-tld-24nov01.htm>,
>this has been accomplished in the present sTLD agreements by stating a
>"charter" defining the purposes for which the TLD may be used and then
>expressly defining a "Sponsored TLD Community", which in general terms
>is "either commensurate in scope with or broader than the registrants
>within the scope of the charter."  To ensure that requirements that
>policies made under ICANN's policy ambit are developed in a manner that
>involves all affected, whether directly by ICANN or through delegation
>to a Sponsor, subsection 4.2 of the sTLD agreement sets forth a series
>of requirements on how the Sponsor may exercise delegated authority:
>
>"4.2. General Obligations of Sponsor. During the Term of this Agreement,
>Sponsor shall, in developing or enforcing standards, policies,
>procedures, or practices within the scope of its delegated authority
>with respect to the Sponsored TLD:
>
>"4.2.1. publish such standards, policies, procedures, and practices so
>they are available to members of the Sponsored TLD Community;
>
>"4.2.2. conduct its policy-development activities in manner that
>reasonably provides opportunities for members of the Sponsored TLD
>Community to discuss and participate in the development of such
>standards, policies, procedures, or practices;
>
>"4.2.3. maintain the representativeness of its policy-development and
>implementation process by establishing procedures that facilitate
>participation by a broad cross-section of the Sponsored TLD Community;
>
>"4.2.4. ensure, through published procedures, adequate opportunities for
>members of the Sponsored TLD Community to submit their views on and
>objections to the establishment or revision of standards, policies,
>procedures, and practices or the manner in which standards, policies,
>procedures, and practices are enforced;
>
>"4.2.5. ensure that any revenues received by Sponsor or any affiliated
>entity directly or indirectly from the provision of Registry Services
>are used solely for the benefit of the Sponsored TLD Community; and
>
>"4.2.6. ensure that any contract with a Registry Operator precludes any
>control by that Registry Operator over the policy-development process of
>the Sponsored TLD."
>
><http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/sponsored/sponsorship-agmt-29aug01.htm#4.2>
>
>II.  Contradictions in Unrestricted, Sponsored TLDs.  In attempting to
>overlay this sponsorship concept on a wholly unrestricted TLD, the task
>force report raises many difficulties.
>
>(a) Scope of representation.  Because the TLD is proposed to be
>unrestricted (both as to existing registrations and future
>registrations), the affected community is unbounded.  The justification
>of delegating ICANN's responsibility to an organization that can
>represent a narrower community in a more focused way (than ICANN) is
>simply absent.  Correspondingly, the Sponsor of a wholly unrestricted
>TLD carries the full weight of representing the entire Internet
>community.  Since it carries ICANN's full representational
>responsibility, the sponsor in essence becomes a second ICANN, which
>should be subject to all the procedures ICANN must follow, including
>taking into account all the views of all segments of the Internet
>community.
>
>(b)  Scope of delegation.  The difficulties of the attempt to combine
>sponsorship and a prohibition of restrictions is also apparent from the
>limits the task force report proposes on the Sponsor's authority.  The
>recently completed sTLD agreements set forth seventeen items as to which
>policy-development responsibility is delegated to the Sponsors in
>attachment 2 to the agreements:
>
>.aero:
><http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/aero/sponsorship-agmt-att2-20nov01.htm>
>
>.coop:
>http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/coop/sponsorship-agmt-att2-06nov01.htm>
>
>.museum:
><http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/museum/sponsorship-agmt-att2-20aug01.htm>
>
>These delegated items fall into six broad categories:
>
>A.  naming conventions within the TLD, restrictions, and name-selection
>principles (items 1-5 and 14);
>
>B.  additional dispute-resolution mechanisms (item 6);
>
>C.  selection and supervision of the registry operator (items 7-9);
>
>D.  selection of qualified registrars, practices of registrars, and
>terms of dealing of registrars with registrants and the registry
>operator (items 10-13);
>
>E.  start-up of the TLD (item 15); and
>
>F.  Whois policies (item 16).
>
>(Item 17 generally supports implementation of the prior 16 items.)
>
>Comparing this list of delegated items with the task force report makes
>clear that the task force report envisions that only a small slice of
>this authority will be delegated.  Instead of proposing to find an
>organization representative of a distinct sub-community and thereby
>allowing that community to formulate basic policy, the task force report
>at one point  appears to give no delegation of authority at all.  As
>point 6 of the task force report says:  "TLD administration must adhere
>to policies defined through ICANN processes, such as policies regarding
>registrar accreditation, shared registry access, dispute resolution, and
>access to registration contact data."  If this provision means what it
>literally says, the TLD simply would not be sponsored at all.
>
>At other points in the report, however, it appears to propose to give
>the Sponsor broader policy authority.  Point 2b, for example, indicates
>that the Sponsor might be responsible for "accreditation of registrars";
>this seems at odds with the language of point 6 quoted immediately
>above.  This leaves unclear what the role of the Sponsor is--can it
>dictate who can be and who cannot be a registrar?  This is only one of
>several ambiguities in the report's proposed role of the .org sponsor
>and for ICANN.
>
>III.  Sponsored Status Is Unnecessary in an Unrestricted TLD.  The
>confusing character of the report's proposal of an unrestricted,
>sponsored TLD is unnecessary.  Operators of unsponsored TLDs (VeriSign,
>NeuLevel, Afilias, and Global Name Registry) are responsible for
>operating their businesses within well-defined, but expansive, bounds
>set forth in their registry agreements.  This business discretion would
>appear to allow the flexibility that the task force sought to "promote
>and attract" registrations from the community of non-commercial (broadly
>defined, including cultural, expressive, etc.) organizations.
>
>It should be emphasized that there is no reason that a uTLD operator
>must be commercial.  A non-profit entity could readily be selected as
>the registry operator and then outsource the back-end to a commercial
>entity (similar to Afilias's outsourcing to Liberty).
>
>As noted in the 15 August 2000 "Criteria for Assessing TLD Proposals"
>document, some degree of policy-formulation responsibility is devolved
>in both uTLDs and sTLDs:
>
>"In the context of unsponsored TLDs, this can appropriately be
>accomplished for many operational matters by giving the registry
>operator flexibility in the registry contract. For restricted TLDs, some
>have suggested a "sponsorship" model, in which policy-formulation
>responsibility for the TLD would be delegated to a sponsoring
>organization that allows participation of the affected segments of the
>relevant communities."
>
><http://www.icann.org/tlds/tld-criteria-15aug00.htm#7>
>
>The task force report states that sponsorship is beneficial because it
>can give the non-commercial community greater influence over (a) the
>image of .org presented to the public; (b) distribution of surplus
>revenues; and (c) selection of management personnel.  All these things,
>however, could readily be handled in the unsponsored TLD context.
>Operators of uTLDs routinely engage in marketing and select their
>management personnel.  They also choose what to do with any surplus
>revenues.
>
>As well-stated by Bret Fausett in his 1 December 2001 icann.Blog article
>entitled "Sponsored, Unrestricted .Org":
>
>"So it's not entirely clear what a sponsoring entity would do when
>overseeing an unrestricted TLD. Each of the possible benefits listed in
>the report ("Sponsorship is beneficial because...") also would be
>realized simply with a new registry operator and some guidelines for
>operation built into a new .org registry accreditation contract. To my
>way of thinking, all the Task Force's proposed change would do is create
>a new level of bureaucracy for .org domain name registrants and
>registrars."
>
>That view counsels strongly in favor of reforming the task force's
>recommendations to call for an organizational structure that is either
>(a) sponsored and restricted (like .museum), (b) unsponsored and
>restricted (like .name or .biz), or (c) unsponsored and unrestricted
>(like .com or .info) - but not sponsored and unrestricted.
>
>Please let me know if I can provide further information on these points.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Louis Touton
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