Another Transition Plan Proposal

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

On 12/16/09 1:40 PM, Cary Karp wrote:
>> the universe of technically competent operators is much, much larger
>> than the universe of operators which are directly, or indirectly,
>> party to a contract with ICANN.
>
> Yep. So it's a good thing that the five TLDs that participate directly
> in the Guidelines group (all volunteers; none ICANN appointees) are as
> evenly divided between contracted and non-contracted parties as can be.


This may miss the point that non-contracted operators, e.g., CNNIC, 
may, in the future, operate contracted registries, e.g., .FOO, where 
the parties to the ICANN contract are BAR Corp., a TLD holdings 
company in the Bahamas, and ICANN.

Its not the current g and c problem, in which CORE is the unique 
orphan with registries and no contracted party status (save as a 
registrar, not relevant to the issue), but the future g and c problem, 
where the majority of gTLDs are not operated by the union of Verisign, 
NeuStar and Afilias, nor by CORE either, just for the implied humor.

In that future, most operators will have no contractual relationship 
with ICANN, due to a business decision made last summer, scrapping the 
"certified (or certifiable) registry operator" designation and the 
implied relationship. That leaves a virtual room full of lawyers, 
three of whom channel (when in a trance) the available technical clue.

Eric