Re: Relationship of CORE and ISOC, timetable for current gTLD

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

Dave Crocker allegedly said:
> 
> At 2:28 PM -0600 12/24/96, Danny Padwa wrote:
> >	I'm a little worried that CORE is not explicitly made
> >responsible to ISOC by the draft.   Is it responsible to its board
> >members - the already operational registries?
> 
> 	I have mixed feelings about the need for a body above CORE.  The
> mixed membership of CORE's board of trustees is intended to provide
> community oversight.  If you feel it inadequate, please offer text which
> specifies an additional oversight group, both its makeup and its operation.

Dave, the membership of CORE is composed entirely of registrar
representatives, and the board of trustees is half composed of
registrar representatives.  There is no other oversight whatsoever
defined for this group.  Would you want the telephone companies, for
example, totally controlled by such a group, with absolutely no
legislative or regulatory oversight? All it takes is 1 of the
non-registrar members of the board of trustees to be sympathetic to
the registrars for the registrars interests to have complete control. 
And there is *nobody else* to complain to.  Period.  With true public
utilities we have legislative and regulatory oversight -- CORE has
*none*.  The MoU becomes meaningless in such circumstances, since
there is *nobody* defined to enforce it.

CORE should be a day-to-day operations group entirely, not an
oversight group.  Oversight, including the creation of new TLDs,
should remain in a committee: The ROC - Registry Oversight Committee,
a group of not fewer than 12 people who are elected equally from the
membership of the IETF and the ISOC.  The members of the committee 
should be unpaid.   The term of office should be 4 years, with 
staggered two year elections.  The ROC should try to delegate as much as 
possible, but always remain the final appeal forum.  It should be 
empowered to charter volunteer committees from the membership of CORE, IETF, 
IANA, and ISOC to aid in developing policy.

This committee should be named in the MoU as the final appeal forum
for registry issues, and should pass on the creation of all new 
TLDs.  The ROC is ultimately responsible to the IETF and the ISOC, 
and only secondarily to CORE.

Dave, the current mess with NSI would be largely avoided if there was 
effective oversight.  This is one error we should go to great lengths 
to avoid.

-- 
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