# I. Authority ### Part 1 — Authority, Standing, and Operating Principles #### 1. Authority and Hierarchy of Instruments 1.1 **Instrument hierarchy.** The Guild operates under the following hierarchy, in descending order of authority:\ 1.1.1 applicable law and binding court/tribunal orders within jurisdiction;\ 1.1.2 the constituting documents and board resolutions of the issuing GCRI entity (GCRI Canada and/or GCRI US, as applicable);\ 1.1.3 this Charter (including any recorded amendments and supersessions);\ 1.1.4 Platform Terms of Use and Platform Handling Rules (as published by the applicable issuer);\ 1.1.5 the Integrity Code and participation policies adopted by record;\ 1.1.6 module-level runbooks, lab procedures, and release guidelines, to the extent consistent with higher instruments. 1.2 **Conflict resolution.** Where instruments conflict:\ 1.2.1 the higher instrument prevails;\ 1.2.2 the conflict shall be recorded as a **Conflict Note** linked to the relevant record set;\ 1.2.3 interim measures may be applied by **stop-the-line** authority where integrity, safety, or legal exposure is implicated. 1.3 **No implied delegation.** Nothing in this Charter delegates governmental, regulatory, enforcement, or supervisory authority, nor creates any quasi-public mandate. 1.4 **Scope lock.** Any interpretation of this Charter shall be made to preserve the non-executing perimeter, neutrality posture, rights safeguards, and correctionability discipline as core invariants. *** #### 2. Relationship to Platform Terms, Handling Rules, and Integrity Code 2.1 **Construction rule.** This Charter constitutes the Guild’s operating constitution and R\&D discipline. Platform Terms, Handling Rules, and the Integrity Code are implementing instruments that:\ 2.1.1 bind Platform access and participation;\ 2.1.2 operationalize handling, distribution, and safe publication;\ 2.1.3 specify contributor conduct and integrity expectations. 2.2 **Precedence and incorporation.**\ 2.2.1 Platform Terms and Handling Rules are incorporated by reference for Platform participation and access.\ 2.2.2 Where the Platform Terms or Handling Rules impose stricter safeguards than this Charter, the stricter safeguard governs for Platform participation.\ 2.2.3 Where the Platform Terms or Handling Rules would be read to authorize prohibited conduct under this Charter, such reading is void and must be corrected by record. 2.3 **Integrity Code as stop-the-line spine.** The Integrity Code establishes:\ 2.3.1 non-negotiable behavioral safeguards (handling discipline, anti-misrepresentation, no exploitation enablement, antitrust-safe conduct);\ 2.3.2 breach classes and enforcement ladder;\ 2.3.3 incident registers and escalation clocks;\ 2.3.4 required training and recertification postures. 2.4 **No employment and no agency.** Platform participation and Guild membership do not create employment, fiduciary duty, partnership, or agency, absent a separate written agreement expressly stating otherwise. *** #### 3. Dual-Entity Boundary Doctrine 3.1 **Legal separation; mission-locked alignment.**\ 3.1.1 GCRI Canada and GCRI US are separate legal persons with independent boards, liabilities, and contracting capacity.\ 3.1.2 They may align on a common mission and shared technical agenda, but alignment does not merge governance, liabilities, or authority. 3.2 **Non-substitution; no implied agency.**\ 3.2.1 Neither entity may represent itself as the other, nor imply delegation of authority.\ 3.2.2 No staff, officer, volunteer, or Guild role-holder may sign “for” both entities unless expressly authorized by written instrument recorded by both entities. 3.3 **Contracting, employment, and grant boundary principles.**\ 3.3.1 Each entity contracts in its own name.\ 3.3.2 Each entity hires in its own name.\ 3.3.3 Grants, sponsorships, and paid services (if any) must be receipted and governed under the receiving entity’s policies, with influence caps and non-capture controls applied.\ 3.3.4 Cross-entity services (shared infrastructure, shared tooling, shared brand materials) must be governed by written arrangements specifying scope, cost allocation, IP rights, and liability boundaries. 3.4 **Publication and attribution authority.**\ 3.4.1 Every artifact must state its issuing entity, scope election, handling class, reliance bounds, and correction path.\ 3.4.2 Joint publications must include a joint publication record and delineate issuer responsibilities, including correction obligations.\ 3.4.3 Where publication authority is uncertain, the artifact shall not be released until authority is clarified by record. *** #### 4. Guild Identity 4.1 **Stewardship thesis.** The Guild is an R\&D commons stewarding web resilience as critical infrastructure, treating the web as a coupled system where security, privacy, identity, standards, performance, accessibility, and governance are inseparable in practice. 4.2 **Digital Public Good posture.**\ 4.2.1 The Guild defaults to open methods, open education, and open reference implementations where safe and lawful.\ 4.2.2 Restrictions are permitted only to the minimum extent necessary to prevent harm, comply with law, protect sensitive research, preserve contestability, or maintain integrity. 4.3 **Evidence-first, theatre-last.** The Guild prioritizes: reproducibility, uncertainty disclosure, and correctionability over hype, claims marketing, and performative governance. 4.4 **Neutrality as an invariant.** The Guild is procurement-neutral, vendor-neutral, and ideology-neutral; it publishes methods and evidence, not endorsements. *** #### 5. Validity-by-Record and Quality Markings 5.1 **Validity-by-record rule.** An output is a “Guild output” only if:\ 5.1.1 it has a Release Record and version ID;\ 5.1.2 it has a handling class election and reliance bounds;\ 5.1.3 it includes provenance, test coverage summary, limitations, and correction path;\ 5.1.4 it is issued by an authorized signer for the issuing entity. 5.2 **Permitted quality markings.** The following markings may be applied only under Release Record:\ 5.2.1 **Guild-Reviewed** — reviewed for scope, labeling completeness, and perimeter compliance; not a correctness guarantee.\ 5.2.2 **Lab-Validated** — validated against defined test harnesses with stated coverage; reproducibility grade declared.\ 5.2.3 **Release-Ready** — meets release gates for safety, handling, and correctionability; production suitability depends on adopter controls.\ 5.2.4 **Dataset-Ready** — meets dataset governance gates (lineage, consent/lawful basis as applicable, bias/drift notes, refresh policy).\ 5.2.5 **Benchmark-Ready** — meets benchmark integrity gates (anti-gaming controls, sampling disclosure, drift monitoring, appeals path).\ 5.2.6 **Enterprise-Deployable** — meets Platform integration and operationalization gates as a *research output* (API stability posture, audit logs, labeling, correction clocks), without implying certification or compliance determination. 5.3 **Prohibition on informal outputs.** Drafts, chats, slide fragments, emails, issues, commits, or forum posts are not Guild outputs unless incorporated into a Release Record. 5.4 **Misuse of markings.** Any misuse, inflation, or deceptive presentation of quality markings triggers misrepresentation controls and enforcement. *** #### 6. Neutrality and Procurement/Vendor Neutrality 6.1 **No preferred stacks.** The Guild shall not recommend specific vendors, products, or procurement outcomes as “preferred,” “approved,” or “required,” except where stating open standards conformance requirements or testable interoperability criteria. 6.2 **Comparative research constraints.** Comparative publications are permitted only if:\ 6.2.1 methodology is published;\ 6.2.2 sampling and limitations are explicit;\ 6.2.3 conflicts are disclosed;\ 6.2.4 outputs are presented as evidence, not endorsement;\ 6.2.5 appeals and correction paths are available. 6.3 **No procurement steering.** The Guild shall not: participate in bidder selection; write procurement specs tailored to a vendor; or accept compensation contingent on procurement outcomes. *** #### 7. Competition and Labor-Market Safety 7.1 **Competition-safe protocol.** Guild collaboration shall be conducted under a competition-safe protocol, including:\ 7.1.1 agenda discipline;\ 7.1.2 prohibited topic list (prices, market allocation, boycotts, wage fixing, no-poach, coordinated bidding, output restriction);\ 7.1.3 safe-meeting scripts and minute templates;\ 7.1.4 recordkeeping for meetings designated Controlled or Restricted;\ 7.1.5 immediate stop-the-line escalation on potential breach. 7.2 **No collective exclusion.** The Guild shall not create blacklists, coordinated exclusion, or punitive boycotts. Integrity enforcement applies only to Guild participation and labeling rights, not market access. 7.3 **Labor-market neutrality.** The Guild shall not facilitate or coordinate wage, hiring, compensation, or employment restriction arrangements. *** #### 8. Security-by-Design and Dual-Use Discipline 8.1 **Do-no-harm publication posture.** The Guild shall publish in a manner that reduces risk, avoids exploit enablement, and supports safe adoption. 8.2 **Dual-use gating.** Outputs are subject to dual-use review where they could materially increase exploitability, coercion, surveillance capacity, censorship engineering, or systemic harm. 8.3 **Abstraction and safe detail levels.**\ 8.3.1 Public-safe outputs must avoid step-by-step exploitation, weaponization detail, or actionable evasion recipes.\ 8.3.2 Controlled/Restricted outputs may contain additional detail when justified by safety purpose, lawful basis, and distribution controls. 8.4 **Supply chain integrity.** Code and releases must follow secure build and provenance discipline (SBOM/SLSA posture, signing, versioning), consistent with Platform release gates. *** #### 9. Rights-Preserving Research 9.1 **Rights as invariants.** The Guild’s research and measurement shall preserve, as core invariants:\ 9.1.1 privacy and data minimization;\ 9.1.2 freedom of expression and association (subject to lawful constraints);\ 9.1.3 non-discrimination and accessibility;\ 9.1.4 due process and contestability for claims made about systems or actors. 9.2 **Observatory ≠ surveillance.** The Guild shall not engage in covert surveillance, intrusive tracking, or identity unmasking as a research objective. 9.3 **No censorship blueprinting.** The Guild shall not design or publish coercive moderation engineering schemes intended to suppress lawful speech or orchestrate viewpoint control; integrity research must remain evidence-based and non-coercive. *** #### 10. Correctionability as a Trust Primitive 10.1 **No silent edits.** Substantive changes to artifacts, datasets, benchmarks, or claims require a Correction/Supersession Record. 10.2 **Correction clocks.** Corrections are time-bounded by severity tier and must state: impact, affected versions, mitigations, and migration guidance. 10.3 **Dissent preservation.** Where disagreements exist, dissent shall be preserved in the decision record and made available consistent with handling class. 10.4 **Longitudinal comparability.** Benchmarks and measurement reports must preserve comparability over time through: stable identifiers, drift notes, method-change disclosures, and supersession pointers. 10.5 **Integrity over optics.** The Guild treats correction as a primary integrity mechanism, not reputational failure; suppression of corrections is itself an integrity incident. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.therisk.global/organization/cooperation/nexus-guilds/future-of-web/i.-authority.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.