Problems with section 5

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

It is surprising to me that there has been so much concern about the 
60 day waiting period.  All the significant problems with the draft, 
in my opinion, are in section 5, on registrar operation.  I have a 
number of issues with that section, more than can be handled in a 
single mail message.  So, here's the first one

First Issue:  CORE and oversight of registrars

In section 5.1, it states:

    IAHC delegates stewardship for the set of gTLDs to the Council of
    Registrars (CORE), comprising the multiple, competing gTLD
    registrars. ...

and

    The Board [of Trustees of CORE] shall comprise: Half elected from
    member organizations, and half external to CORE, having no direct
    entanglement with CORE-related activities. 

I presume that "member organizations" in the above sentence means the
"multiple, competing gTLD registrars."

If so, then this means that the body overseeing the operation of the
registries is an organization overwhelmingly populated and
substantially controlled by the registrars themselves.  Regardless of
the contents of the CORE-MoU, this is not meaningful oversight, and *no
other oversight of the registrars is described in the document*.  An
axiom of public policy is that entities have a difficult time
separating their economic good from their public roles.  Thus, we have
substituted an oligopoly for a monopoly. 

In my opinion, an oversight body completely independent of the 
registrars needs to exist, and it needs to be specified in the 
document. 

Furthermore, in section 5.1, it also states

    Creation of any future gTLDs is under the aegis and policy
    coordination of the CORE. 

This is inconsistent with the definition of STEWARD ["Oversight
responsibility for a registry rests with a STEWARD" and "With respect
to the work of IAHC, a registry pertains to a single gTLD and
encompasses all of the services needed for assignment and maintenance
of that TLD and its registrations"], and in any case, CORE should 
*not* be responsible for creation of new gTLDs, since there may be 
strong monetary incentives for creation of new gTLDs that are at odds 
with public policy objectives.

Of course, having the registrars be largely self-policing and
self-governing is a highly desirable objective.  However, as CORE is 
currently described, it is an organization with broad powers, little 
oversight, and the collective economic interest of the registrars as 
an unavoidable implicit primary objective.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com,kc@llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E  87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F