Open Letter

[jp@PalmerOwns.The.Earth (John Palmer)]

> 
> I AGREE 100% with John Palmer's premise that a  registry needs ownership
> to ensure that the investment is worth the risk. There exists a fear on the
> part of some IAHC members that Exclusivity and Abusive Excesses are
> synonymous. Under a Exclusive Licensing setup, where the exclusive licensee
> must sublicense the rights to market the gTLD to all other CORE members,
> the Abusive Excesses are held in check, while at the same time providing a
> sound business basis for capital investment involved in financing a
> registry.
> 
[ ... ]

Perhaps the following would work:
   Allow ownership of specific gTLDs. The owner acts as a "master
registry". They are the exclusive registry for their particular
gTLD's BUT they can only take registrations from other registries. 

   You have two kinds of registries: master and end-user.

   End user registries are universal - they deal with the public and
can register people into any gTLD. The software that they use is 
standardized so that the message format (from end-user to master and
v/v) is decided upon.

  Master registries have exclusive control over at most 3 gTLDs. They
are the keepers of the DNS zone files for those gTLD's and also the
WHOIS database. If you want - you can also require them to deposit 
copies of the databases with a safekeeping archivist in case they go 
out of business. The master registry operates the name servers for
the gTLD's that they own and can make contracts with third parties
for addtional name servers or whois servers. The point is that they are
responsible for name service and whois service. 

  A settlements mechanism is developed to control the flow of payments
from end user registries to master registries and any percentages that
IANA/CORE gets:
          EUR #1201 registers Eiffel.Paris.France.EARTH for a
          customer.

          A RAM (Registry action message) is sent to the EARTH
          master registry with all of the pertinent information.
    
          MR-EARTH creates the proper whois and DNS entries and 
          send an ACK-RAM to EUR #1201.

          The settlements mechanism observes this and notes that
             a> EUR #1201 owes MR-EARTH $40
             b> EUR #1201 owes the IANA $1 (2% of the $50 fee).

          EUR #1201 gets a statement from SETTLEMENTS each month 
          containing a transaction list and how much is owed.

          SETTLEMENTS collects payments and disburses them to 
          MR's and the IANA along with a detail report. 

          
Payments could be monthly, weekly, etc. Your choice. 

I can code a prototype in 1 week.

John