CircleID

Escrow of registration information has been a failure - it simply never got started.

An easier approach is to require that TLD operators engage in good business asset preservation practices. In other words, the TLD operator would have to do things that would allow it to survive a data disaster or, in the case of a business failure, ensure that enough information was around for a sucessor to pick up the pieces and continue.

What those practices are would be left to the TLD operator. (It would, of course, be a necessary element of these practices that there be adequate documentation of how the data would be resurrected.)

Every year the TLD operator must present to ICANN and to the public an letter from an outside auditor stating that in the opinion of the auditor that the TLD operator practices good asset preservation practices that provide adequate protection.

The contract should clearly grant third party beneficiary status to the customers to enforce the asset preservation practices.