... ... Nearly all of the new TLD applicants use one of a handful of familiar registry operators as back end operators, and the .NYC application says that their back end is Neustar. Nothing sinister about that.

But Neustar isn't defining .NYC's registration rules, marketing plan, or other stuff beyond registry operations. That's the bit I was wondering about.

john, choice of backends may limit tenant policy and/or operational practice, e.g., multi-step registration eligibility check, performed by the .coop, .museum and .cat operators and a very few registrars. constraint(s) may be present in the tenant's choices for "sunrise" and "landrush" registrations prior to general availability. as you've observed on several occasions, in several venues, these have, in the presence of other constraints now reduced or eliminated, chiefly the must-use-third-party-registrars requirement, profoundly limited the uptake, and apparent utility, of name spaces operated by registry agreement holders utilizing own, or policied third-party registry operators and retail channels. i was personally amused when i read the doitt's original sollicitation, and found "mandatory to implement" references [1] to xrp -- the protocol i personally advocated for, in whole and in parts, in the pre-ietf group of implementors, and in the ietf epp working group, while employed by neustar/neulevel. i think it is incorrect to observe that the doitt arrived at its choice of contractor uninformed by neustar, and not surprisingly selected neustar as its initial contractor to prepare its bid. i think it is also incorrect to speculate that the doitt will be unable to exercise agency during the neustar contract period, however, the doitt goals reflected in its initial, intermediate, and final instructions to bidders, in which i participated fully while consulting for core, were split between two very difficult to simultaniously operationalize goals -- the public interest and short term revenue maximization. the doitt's eventual committal to one, or the other, of these two basic business models, should be evident no later than the publication of the applicant's "sunrise" plan. joly, i concur with your recital of tom's statement of position in the only public hearing the current administration allowed. -e [1] i'll be happy to dig up my bidders' questions to the doitt to clarify what the doitt ment by mandating implementation of xrp and share that, and the doitt's response, should either of you or care to see the originals.