All, 

Let’s remember that this is a contract between ICANN and the New gTLD Registries.  It is not a Registry-Registrar Agreement or a Registrar-Registrant Agreement.  Accordingly, everything in it must be legit under ICANN’s Bylaws. We want our ICANN Board Members, including Becky, to sleep at night.  

To do so, terms that are put into an RVC must fall within terms to which ICANN, as a signatory to this contract, must agree. Again, this is *ICANN’s contract.* There are many things we would not put into the vPICs/RVCs therefore, even though they may happen. Like some cooperation with local law enforcement and providing data on users and use. It may happen; it’s not in our contracts or blessed or enforced by ICANN. 

Accordingly, to the end of Recommendation 9.12, we must add something about the requirements of the RVC.  A registrant cannot be required to paint the moon pink, and the PICs should not be allowed to push ICANN outside its mission, mandate, scope and core values. These are ICANN commitments to all of us, and to the world, in its Bylaws. Accordingly we must add:  RVCs will not address the contents of websites or apps that use domain names, they will be consistent with ICANN’s Human Rights Core Value, they will not allow the registry arbitrary discretion to suspend a domain name, and they will not be used to create new policies that did not come through ICANN processes.   

These limitations are substantive – they will keep the RVCs within the bounds of what ICANN is allowed to sign and what ICANN is allowed to do.  The Attorney Generals do not want to see a spate of new contracts from California public interest corporation coming without principles and guardrails for what one party, in its self-interest, can impose on other parties, particularly those who are weaker – a registry imposing arbitrary and unfair terms on its registrants (note: unfair RVCs did not, in Round 1, come through the public processes we are working hard to protect, including GAC Early Warnings, GAC Consensus Advice, and settlements of Objections e.g., Community, Legal Rights, etc).   

We need to finish up 9.12 with the additions above.  RVCs will no longer be the dumping ground or the “kitchen sink” as they were in 2013-2014. This is critical for ICANN’s integrity, and for this I quote, as I did in my March 11, 2020, CircleID article: Becky Burr, then and still an ICANN Board member, speaking in her personal capacity at an event at American University Washington College of Law in February 2019, ICANN and New gTLDs, describing the Round 1 private PIC process: "I hope we never see any like that [again]", "the process by which that happened was appalling," "and most registries and registrars were appalled by that process as well." "A subset of… registry applicants came in and made ... commitments that were like, literally, everything in the kitchen sink."  [emphasis added]

No more “kitchen sink,” and we’re done. 

Best, Kathy