[soac-newgtldapsup-wg] Thinking about the TDG-Legal meeting and JAS goals

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues,

In Thursday's TDG-Legal meeting I will ask Staff to provide the 
rational(s) for:
1. cash obligation for operational funding of needs-qualified 
applicants, in lieu of any other means to guarantee the acceptable 
level of performance of the specific functions.
If needs-qualified applicants can form "insurance pools", as we've 
discussed earlier, or can obtain guarantees of "continuity" service 
from ccTLD registry operators, or can subscribe to some "continuity" 
service provider, and historically there have been and continue to be 
pro-bono providers of technical and operational support for registry 
operators in developing economies, then the cost to the 
needs-qualified applicants is changed in form from 
pre-application-time irrevocable grants of resources to ICANN, and 
reduced in total cost.

2. continuity obligations for needs-qualified applicants who's 
proposed registration policies are not structured to induce foreign 
trademark registration.
If the interests of the registrant to be protected are registrants in 
the developing economies, then the locality of continuity service is a 
concern. If the interests of the registrant to be protected are those 
of trademark holders in developed economies, then the locality of 
continuity service is probably not a concern.
We need to know if the goal of "continuity" is protecting "GA 
registrants" or protecting "Sunrise registrants".

3. complete, pre-application funding of the continuity function, 
rather than pay-as-you-grow (and the dependency of registrants 
increases) structure of the instrument.
Ab initio, a new registry has no registrants. The fully-loaded 
up-front form of funding the continuity instrument means the 1st 
registrant has no more risk of loss than the 10,000th registrant. 
Making the new gTLD program "risk free" for registrants is out of 
scope, particularly when the subsidized property is paid for by 
needs-qualified applicants.
Eric