Re: [nc-transfer] Standardized definitions

["Ross Wm. Rader" <ross@tucows.com>]

>
> This is offtopic I know, but I am also interested in the use of the
> "sponsorship" language.  Contrary to Elizabeth however my initial thought
> (but not a very detailed one :-)) when I saw this language, was that it
> might be a useful way of avoiding the language of "delegation" or
"licence".
> To me as a lawyer these types of terms, which have often been used to
> describe the ability of a participant in the DNS (eg a TLD manager or a
> registrar ... or ICANN itself) to allocate rights to someone else (eg an
SLD
> manager or registrant or TLD manager), seem to carry top down conferral of
> rights implications which may not be appropriate where the relationship is
> more symbiotic.

Not as off-topic as one might initially think. While the concept of
"Sponsoring Organization" is likely not to be important to our
deliberations, those of "Sponsoring Registrar"/"SLD Sponsor" are.

>
> Has there been any clarification by ICANN staff as to what they intended
in
> use of the "sponsorship" language or what they think it means?
>

In the above examples, my interpretation (and thus the definition that I
went with) was that this was intended to mean the registrar responsible for
the submission and maintenance of the domain object in the registry
database. These entities act on behalf of "Domain Holders". All of this
language falls out of the wording of the ICANN Registrar Accreditation
agreement - which doesn't specificaly speak of registrants etc., but uses
these alternative labels instead. Declaring and defining the relationship
between the terms registrant - user - domain holder was one of my initial
motivations behind writing this document.

And, to bring it full circle, according to the contract that the registrars
have with the registries and ICANN, the policies that this TF have been
tasked to analyse are those governing the Inter-Registrar Transfer of
Sponsorship of Registered Names. ;) Needless to say, I hope that our efforts
will be a lot less clinical and slightly more inclusive of the end-users
than the label attached to the policy that we have to deal with.

-rwr