Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] Re: On "bundling" (was: comment on the Andruff Bundling Letter)

[ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Alain,

> ... it would be highly desirable that an "outsider" language recovery
> and/or language preservation consultant or institution have some degree
> of formal support from within the language community (ies)...

A formal support requirement is part of the community-based evaluation
in the current ICANN Staff designed process model, if, and only if, the
applicant elects to "comparative evaluation" (the name may have changed),
intended, in the current ICANN Staff designed process model, to provide a
means to determine the means to select one application out of a SWORD
algorithm defined contention set of two or more applications.

So as a condition for application support, whether arising from the JAS
WG, or some alternate language diversity promoting working group, a test
for formal support from within the language community (ies), is more than
is in the Staff's plan of record.

It seems useful to ask what risks identified as significant cost factors
in the current ICANN Staff designed process model are eliminated or are
significantly reduced or mitigated by the demonstrated existance of formal
support, meeting the JAS defined criteria, and/or some alternate language
diversity interest defined criteria, from within the language community (ies).

It also seems useful to ask how the registry contractual relationship can,
in the future, pass from the "outsider" language recovery and/or language
preservation consultant or institution, obtained with formal support from
within the language community (ies), either through the "comparative
evaluation" means of selecting the prevailing application from within a
contention set, or through JAS WG recommended, or other forms of applicant
support, to a successor operator "inside" the language community (ies).

At present there really doesn't appear to be "an ICANN answer" to this
question, as no conduct by registry operators contrary to an original
sponsorship statement, or current sponsorship statements, appears to have
any relevance to contract renewal, and renewal by default with the current
party, even in the presence of a central and unresolved competition policy
issue, and here I refer specifically to the proposed renewal of Verisign's
contract to operate the .net registry, is ICANN's current practice.

This means that an award of a registry contract to an "outsider" entity
should be viewed as a permanent grant of control, even ownership, of
a language or languages for which the commercial market, at the fee
level set by ICANN, is capable of only marginal support for subsequent
registries offering the same script.

An hypothetical example is SIL International (formerly known as the Summer
Institute of Linguistics), an "organization of Christian volunteers that
specializes in serving the lesser-known language communities of the world". 

The grant of a registry agreement for any minority language in which SIL
applies, and can demonstrate formal support, and after all, there is a
Christian presence in any community who's language is the target of Bible
Translation, so that is a given, is permanent, and until ICANN one-time
and recurring fees and costs drop substantively, likely to successfully
prevent any alternative.

While SIL International does not have an overtly extirpitory agenda towards
non-Christian textual traditions in Indigenous cultures, its anticeedent
Christian organizations have, and a permanent grant of control over a script
and language to an external entity, whether religious or commerical, pursuing
external goals, whether of conversion or profit, presents a profound public
interest problem.

At some point the logic of contractual continuity has to yeild to the 
principle of self-determination.

Eric