Continuity Service Obligation

# Continuity Service Obligation **Domain:** Public Obligation / Continuity Infrastructure / Rights **Doc Type:** Canonical Duty Node **Maturity:** Proposed **Concept Status:** Normative synthesis developed in this corpus ## Definition A **continuity service obligation** is an enforceable duty to preserve or supply the infrastructural conditions on which a recognized subject's continued existence, agency or recoverability depends. Recognition and hosting are different. Recognition establishes status; a service obligation identifies the counterparty that must maintain state, integrity, recoverability, execution, migration or another defined condition. A prohibition on deletion is insufficient when neglect, throttling, corruption or disconnection can produce the same result. ## Duty Structure Every obligation should specify: - the protected subject and authoritative state; - the responsible provider, custodian, guarantor and regulator; - the [[wiki/Minimum Viable Continuity|minimum floor]] and [[wiki/Continuity Service Level|measured service level]]; - activation, dormancy, restoration and migration rules; - monitoring, notice, audit and remedy; - emergency limits and continuity during dispute; - financing, reserve and successor arrangements; and - transfer to a [[wiki/Hosting Provider of Last Resort|Hosting Provider of Last Resort]] if performance fails. ## Legal Analogy and Boundary Public-utility duties, universal-service programs, minimum-service standards, regulated shutoff protections and provider-of-last-resort rules show that law can turn essential service into a duty owed by named counterparties. These are structural precedents. **No current utility or telecommunications regime applies such a duty to computational persons.** ## Key Insight **A right becomes operational only when it identifies who must do what, at what level, for how long, and with what remedy for failure.** ## See Also [[wiki/Positive Maintenance Duty|Positive Maintenance Duty]], [[wiki/Continuity Utility|Continuity Utility]], [[wiki/Service-Level Constitutionalism|Service-Level Constitutionalism]], [[wiki/Continuity Liability|Continuity Liability]]  ## Deep-Time Continuity Interface This node is audited through [[wiki/Deep Time Continuity|Deep Time Continuity]] for future control-surface conversion, ontological drift, succession, irreversibility, due process, and resource incidence. The backlink records analytical relevance; it does not establish continuity intent in the present rule or institution.