[governance] ICANN taxes/fees

[Phil Regnauld]

Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law (froomkin) writes:
> We both know people who run registries, perhaps you should talk to someone 
> who runs one and isn't an incumbent (ie with a vested interest in making 
> it sound harder than it is).  The technical problem is long-solved.

    Indeed.  The market segment of domain names was partly pulled (Internet
    boom), partly pushed (the registries) into a zone of highly speculative
    business, for motivations of profit (the registries and registrars)
    and security/protection (the complex legal framework of the UDRP and
    similar agreements) that big businesses wanted in place.

    Not surprisingly, the debate has since moved to questions of governance,
    sovereignty and national legislation.  It was only a matter of time before
    those who pointedly ignored, or who were told to ignore, the Internet as
    a passing fad, suddenly showed interest for this "critical resource".

	Technically, it's not that much from many other business applications.

> The "companies" part of the problem isn't especially hard either since you 
> have a pretty small number of clients (registrars, rather than the 
> public).  I would guess that it's actually much tougher to be a registrar 
> on the companies end.

    Indeed, they take the load of complaints.  They're the ones who have
    to deal with lawsuits and high legal fees as a standard running cost.

> The 'hard' part of being a registry is being sufficiently reliable.  But 
> Karl and others tell me the tech problem isn't very interesting or 
> difficult.

    It's been solved, like most IT problems, sometime in the 70s.  The
    rest was a question of implementation.

> As for registries that may die, this also is a solved problem 
> intellectually: (1) ICANN can demand that data be escrowed with a trusted 
> third party;

    That would be a good thing, but where do you draw the line ?  Is it
    a requirement for gTLDs ?  A recommendation for ccTLDs ?

> (2) Even without (1) we let the market sort it out.  If there 
> are many players, one failure isn't a big deal; and if maintaining the 
> data has value, some other player takes it over.

    Definitely.

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