Hi John, On 03/12/2014 07:11, John Levine wrote: ... > At the top page 11, it claims that the MOU is "global in nature." > While that is surely the intention, the MOU is in practice a contract > between ICANN, a California corporation, and the IETF which to the > extent it exists, is a Virginia trust. At the the time the MoU was signed, that Trust did not exist. The IETF was simply in some sort of loose association with ISOC, which iirc is a D.C. corporation. Not that this changes your argument. > So if push came to shove and > one side or the other had to enforce some provision of the contract > against the other, US law would apply and it'd happen in US courts. > So say that -- the IETF operates globally, but it is domiciled in the > US, and the current MOU with ICANN is a US agreement. I agree that a US court would very likely accept jurisdiction, but I don't think we need to say that. We should say that we are global. That's sufficient for this draft's purpose. > Following that, there is a discussion of all the stuff we don't want > to change, all of which is fine. But it doesn't say other than sort > of implicitly in #3 on page 13 that the IETF needs a binding agreement > with the IANA operator that has protections for the IETF community > that are substantially the same as those in the MOU in RFC 2860. It > really needs to say that explicitly. I think the first sentence on page 15 covers this: "What is necessary as part of transition is the completion of any supplemental agreement(s) necessary to achieve the requirements outlined in our response in Section III of this RFP." > If IANA stays with ICANN and ICANN reaffirms the MOU, we're fine. As a point of order, they don't need to reaffirm it. All they need to do is not give notice to cancel it. > But > if it were someone else (wave hands about free-floating non-US things > that keep coming up in ALAC and NCUC discussions) who was less > interested in spending $1m/yr to provide a free service to what they > saw as a bunch of nerds from rich countries who keep getting in the > way of their core mission*, things could get very unpleasant. Sure. But this document is surely not the place for a contingency plan. Brian > R's, > John > > * - providing an ever increasing revenue stream to contracted > registries and registrars > >