Thank yo for your comments, Adam. I indeed agree we should make a refernce to Avri's comments. I have included that on the Wiki, as well as James' comments. With respect to the fee, I found the following in a previous ALAC statement on the DAG: http://9a38p6.pra.im (the full URL would probably break in most e-mail clients) "Firstly, with respect to the fee for a new TLD application, and the yearly fee for retaining the delegation, we find that the rationale is at best tenuous (for example, why is it that ICANN needs to recoup costs expensed in previous years for the new gTLD programme if it really doesn’t wish to profit from the new TLD process?). More fundamentally, the one-size-fits all fee structure skews the entire programme in favour of developed world, for-profit TLDs and constitutes a major barrier to entry for community-based TLDs and developing world applications. This is not acceptable. The fee structure should encourage new types of TLDs and not just those wishing to try and create the “next .com”. " So, I think that asking for a lower fee for community-based TLDs is consistent with previous statements. When I comes to actually mentioning an amount, I also have mixed feelings. However, just saying it should be "lower" is not enough, IMHO. During the discussion we had in the EoI working group, some people already considered 55,000 to be too low. It very much depends on the scale you are using. The commercial TLD guys consider the full application fee (185,000) to be "low", but they do not target the same market share. Hence, we need to be more specific when saying we want something lower.

Will the Expression Of Interest kick-off discussion among applicants about strong contention, is that it's purpose?

This was discussed in the EoI WG. There was a consensus that auctions should be avoided at all costs, and that synergies/mergers between applications for the same string needs to be encouraged. For community-based applications that would follow a not-for-profit, cost recovery model, the perspective of auctions may actually kill applications right away. At this time, except for a few strings (berlin, sport, nyc), it is not clear if there will be contention sets. Patrick On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:42:02 +0900, Adam Peake <ajp@glocom.ac.jp> wrote:

Patrick,

Thanks very much for doing this. Pretty much in agreement with what you've said, but am uncomfortable with the paragraph about lowering the fee, not sure this is consistent with past ALAC statements. But I've not looked at those statements recently (not found them all...) Have we mentioned specific amounts in the past, or just stuck with recommendations that applicants looking to serve developing market/noncommercial/small/niche communities of users, etc. be charged a much lower fee.

I support Avri Dori's comments, <http://forum.icann.org/lists/draft-eoi-model/msg00006.html>, particularly that making the process expensive is not in the public interest. Would be good if the ALAC statement could make reference to Avri's comments.