Hello Greg,
That bypasses the community structures entirely, as well as those communities that are not composed of legal persons. For instance, all of those pesky non-contracted parties in the GNSO's Commercial Stakeholder Group and Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group, and also the ALAC (and SSAC and RSSAC, for that matter).
The "directly affected parties" language (and your list) tends to exclude these groups, but they cannot be excluded from the multistakeholder model or the community.
Yes – I wasn’t intending that contracts be a replacement to the powers given to the broader community in the bylaws. I was just noting that in addition to the commitments in the bylaws you can also add the commitments into contracts as well. Regards, Bruce Tonkin