"Chartered" and "Sponsored" TLDs Recently there have been arguments made against the inclusion of "chartered" TLDs in an initial rollout. These arguments indicate that there is widespread confusion about the term. This short paper explains the term, and why the concerns are groundless. A "chartered TLD" is loosely described as a TLD with restrictive rules concerning registrations. Those rules, along with descriptions of how they are enforced and who enforces them, are assumed to be written in a document called a "charter" for the TLD. That is, a charter is essentially a codified registration policy for a TLD. Several restricted TLDs with informal charters exist: .edu (restricted to educational institutions, enforced by NSI), .int (restricted to international intergovernmental organizations, enforced by IANA), .mil (restricted to US Military, enforced by same), .gov (restricted to US government agencies, enforced by the USG). In addition, there are many second level domains in ccTLDs that have restricted registration, generally enforced by the ccTLD registry in question. Arguably, none of these except .int, and perhaps .edu, are "global", but nonetheless, there is ample and varied experience with enforcing restrictions on registrations. It is widely assumed that a charter must be part of a "registry agreement"(*) with ICANN, but, as the above examples show, that is clearly not the case -- none of the above informal charters are part of an agreement with ICANN. In fact, from an operational point of view, a charter is simply a policy, and registries will have policies. Some chartered TLDs might have very limited appeal. The chartered TLD .int, for example, has very few registrations, on the order of 100. It is important to realize that limited appeal is not a problem with a chartered TLD -- it is a virtue. It isn't necessary that every TLD have the implicit goal of competing with NSI. Another example of a potential chartered global TLD: Cary Karp of ICOM has proposed a ".museum" TLD, analogous to the ".edu" TLD. The restriction would be to "serious" museums. The proposed approval authority for registrations would be ICOM, the International Council of Museums: "ICOM is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) maintaining formal relations with UNESCO. It has a consultative status to the United Nations' Economic and Social Council. ICOM was created in 1946 and has around 15,000 members in 147 countries. The membership participates in the activities of 116 National Committees and 25 International Committees. Some National Committees have also organised on a regional level to reinforce their action." (from their web page at www.icom.org) The .museum example illustrates another important feature of the TLD landscape: what has been termed the "sponsor". In fact (at least the last time I checked) ICOM is not interested in being a registry operator -- it is an organization that deals with museums, not with networks. ICOM sees its primary role in this as the entity that approves registrations in the .museum TLD; the entity that effectively enforces the charter. Some other entity -- CORE, one of the ccTLD registries, or another new gTLD registry -- would manage all registry operations for ICOM. The split between the registry operator and a sponsor that is responsible for TLD policy is an important one. A registry operator has very different incentives than a sponsor; a registry operator has natural economic incentives to increase registrations, not to enforce charters. However, there is clear utility to having reference to the charter of a TLD in a registry agreement -- it would be most awkward if ICANN approves a ".grocery" TLD, billed as TLD for grocery store owners, and on opening day the registry operators decided that their economic interests would be better served by catering to pornographic sites. Such additions to a registry agreement would of course need to be carefully written from a legal point of view. But the difficulties are sometimes grossly exaggerated -- there is no need to get involved in hair-splitting discussions about what is and is not a grocery store. The registry agreement with ICANN is a private contract, not a public law. If a grocery store owner leases business property from a landlord, and the landlord has put in the lease a clause that says that the business must be restricted to selling groceries, the landlord will have ample ammunition in court to evict the tenet, if the grocery business suddenly mutates to a vast collection of pornographic videos. Indeed, if the grocery store owner has a "Playboy" magazine on a magazine rack, however, probably nothing would happen. But that is because of the of the particular characteristics of the contract involved, and the normal expectations for what constitutes the grocery business, and is not a weakness in the ability of the law to handle such situations -- a very strict contract *could* be written that strictly restricted the business to the sale of canned goods, for example. Such contracts are bread and butter for lawyers, and there are probably millions of examples we could look at. There are some complications unique to domain name registries, to be sure, but most of those complexities are present whether or not there are clauses that look like a "charter". --- (*) Clearly a new registry will be in a contractual relationship with ICANN; I just refer to that legal binding as the "registry agreement".