[governance] ICANN taxes/fees

[Milton Mueller]

Vittorio:
The way to clear a path for small-scale,nonprofit community oriented
TLDs is simply to open entry. Registries are not difficult to run, and
the idea that running them badly "destabilizes the Internet" is
nonsensical mystification promoted by certain ICANNocrats to legitimize
their regulatory power. 

You don't need subsidies, and indeed  I would argue strongly that a
central global authority doling out subsidies to "approved" (and of
course they would have to be politically acceptable) nonpforit groups is
a far greater danger to the viablity and legitimacy of global civil
society than any economic barrier posed by the operation of a registry.


What you'd do is create a privileged and subsidized group that would
then continuously lobby ICANN to maintain its privileged status (hmm,
sort of like ALAC, but I digress....) 

>>> vb at bertola.eu 2/6/2007 11:30:17 AM >>>
Avri Doria ha scritto:
> one of the prominent arguments against any subsidy program was (to 
put 
> it simply, more simply perhaps then it is): if you can't afford  (or

> raise funds for) the fee for a registry then you probably can't 
afford 
> to run the registry.  i disagreed, but not very successfully.   i
also 
> disagree with the notion that the richer applicants should not 
support 
> the poorer applicants.

I've been raising similar points on the ICANN Board list in the last
few 
weeks, as there was some discussion on new gTLDs. It seems that many 
people in the ICANN community - both among those who support plenty of

new gTLDs, and among those who would create only a few or maybe none at

all - cannot imagine any different model for a gTLD than a big company

or entity establishing a TLD either to make money, or to represent a
big 
money-making industry (eg .aero or .tel).

I think there'd be space for smaller non-profit or community-based
TLDs, 
where perhaps you don't get fully fledged customer service, but where 
you can experiment or aim at other objectives - think for example of 
Karl's .ewe anonymous TLD experiment, or of eu.org, which has been 
giving away free domain names for 10 years now, in quite a reliable 
manner. There is ample evidence that you don't need serious money to
run 
a TLD, apart from ICANN's application fees.

Also, we've been raising several times the point about having 
differentiated application fees between profits and non-profits, and 
also dividing the fee in two parts, one to get the concept approved,
and 
the second one, if you're approved, to cover actual contract 
negotiations. It doesn't make sense that rejected applicants cover the

approved applicants' negotiation costs...
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org 
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org 

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance