At 6:48 PM +0100 1/18/08, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Adam Peake ha scritto:
Personal preference, I'd much prefer any cash to be used for developing nations, example support for ccTLDs (technical excellence in all domains, i.e. "Preserving and enhancing the operational stability, reliability, security, and global interoperability of the Internet.")
I'd be extremely concerned if ICANN started taking the attitude that it has the right to extract arbitrarily high amounts of money from registrants to fund activities that are not directly connected with its own operations and mission. I'm fine with ~$0.20 per domain, I'm fine with supporting developing country ccTLDs or the IGF (or the At Large ;)
sympathetic with this view. However:
if there's enough coming from it, but no one tasked ICANN with being the Treasure Ministry of the Internet, let alone deciding how to redistribute money from the "undeserving" to the "deserving".
Too late. Already done with .ORG. Decision made purely on the grounds of who was most deserving, technical criteria met by many applicants. ISOC revenues now some millions of dollars each year. I'm not sure I agree a sale of a very limited number reserved second level names could be seen as extracting "arbitrarily high amounts of money from registrants". I don't see a user harm issue here. The choice to buy or not would be with the potential buyer, there would be less than 100 (90 max?) no one is forced to do anything. I don't see anything negative for the potential registrant. Who owns the right to profit from reserved names might be interesting... VeriSign? IANA which reserved the names way back: if IANA then does that mean ICANN or US Govt? (remembering the fate of the Intellectual Infrastructure Fund fund, revenues from pre-ICANN registrations.) Adam
-- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------