http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3930246/ICANN+Revenues+Grow.ht... For fiscal 2010, ICANN's revenues from its core operations were reported at $65.77 million, an increase from the the $60.23 million reported for fiscal 2009. ICANN was able to grow revenues from Internet Registries to $31.91 million up from $24.54 million in 2009. 2010 revenues from country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD) grew to $1.67 million, up from $1.57 million the prior year. ICANN also generated new revenues of $236,000 from its IDN ccTLD fast track request process. While ICANN has grown revenues, they also grew expenses in 2010. Total expenses were reported at $58.65 million up from $51.29 million for 2009. [ Report: http://www.icann.org/en/annualreport/annual-report-2010-en.pdf ] --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
On 04/13/2011 03:39 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
For fiscal 2010, ICANN's revenues from its core operations were reported at $65.77 million, an increase from the the $60.23 million reported for fiscal 2009. ICANN was able to grow revenues from Internet Registries to $31.91 million up from $24.54 million in 2009.
When I was on the board the projected estimate of the highest budget that ICANN could ever reach, ever was $9million(US), and that was to be a transient high with the ongoing rate being significantly lower. The difference between that projection - $9million - and the actual - $66million - is on the order of 733%. Evening considering inflation over the last 8 years, that is a rate of growth - mission creep, job expansion - that is not only amazing but highly suggestive of a regulatory body that is suffering cancerous growth and terribly out of control. And we ought not to forget that even these numbers represent a mere shadow of the dollar amounts that come from the ungrounded, fiat registry fees that are collected (and kept) by Verisign and the other registries - an amount that is on the order of a $Billion (yes "b"illion) each year. And they say there are no taxes on the internet. Yeah, right. --karl--
The name of the game is "Collect as much as you can and distribute among friends and supporters". Non-profit charitable corporation ? Sigh ... -J
On 04/13/2011 08:32 PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
The name of the game is "Collect as much as you can and distribute among friends and supporters".
Non-profit charitable corporation ?
And, amazingly enough, some people though Verisign was being generous when they kicked in $500,000 to "sponsor" the San Francisco ICANN meeting last month. Let's see, if you let me take $700,000,000 from the community of internet users, and I give you $500,000 - or 1/1400th - 0.07% - of the amount you've let me take from the public - then is that generosity, a paltry token in ICANN's tin cup, or something else of a much darker nature? The amount of that registry fee is grounded nothing more than the assertion - an assertion made without supporting evidence - that Verisign needs that 7% registration fee every year in order to cover costs. (Similar gifts are made to the other registries.) There are reasons to believe that the actual costs are a tiny portion - pennies on the dollar - of the registry fees that ICANN allows. Has ICANN ever bothered to ask, much less demand, what the registry costs really are? No. Why not? One reason is that everybody who has a say is happy as a clam - the registries make lots of $$, ICANN gets lots of bennies from the registry community, governments don't mind, registrars have learned to quietly eat registry fee increases, and the intellectual property protection industry doesn't care if someone else also makes money - the only one who takes it on the chin is the community of internet users. And in ICANN they are virtually without voice and thus do not matter. In the area of registry fees the community of internet users is a "stakeholder" only in that a stake has been driven through our collective wallet. --karl--
The amount of that registry fee is grounded nothing more than the assertion - an assertion made without supporting evidence - that Verisign needs that 7% registration fee every year in order to cover costs. (Similar gifts are made to the other registries.)
I believe that if you review the history, you'll find that's the amount that was adequate to make some lawsuits go away. The price is clearly way above cost. Verisign runs the .COM and .NET registries together, the costs must be the same, yet it charges $2 less for .NET registrations, and I doubt they're losing money on them. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
On 04/13/2011 09:20 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
The amount of that registry fee is grounded nothing more than the assertion - an assertion made without supporting evidence - that Verisign needs that 7% registration fee every year in order to cover costs. (Similar gifts are made to the other registries.)
I believe that if you review the history, you'll find that's the amount that was adequate to make some lawsuits go away.
Yes. As I remember it, the famous ICANN 7% Solution (which also included the perpetual vesting of .com/.net into Verisign and the separation of .org) was a private deal worked out by one attorney from the law firm that created ICANN and which ICANN rather automatically accepted. It is always nice to buy one's way out of a lawsuit using someone else's money. --karl--
From a $9m conceivable ceiling to $66m in receipts within eight years? That really needs looking into. Does At Large have the wherewithal to lead on that?
Christian On 14 Apr 2011, at 00:05, Karl Auerbach wrote:
On 04/13/2011 03:39 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
For fiscal 2010, ICANN's revenues from its core operations were reported at $65.77 million, an increase from the the $60.23 million reported for fiscal 2009. ICANN was able to grow revenues from Internet Registries to $31.91 million up from $24.54 million in 2009.
When I was on the board the projected estimate of the highest budget that ICANN could ever reach, ever was $9million(US), and that was to be a transient high with the ongoing rate being significantly lower.
The difference between that projection - $9million - and the actual - $66million - is on the order of 733%. Evening considering inflation over the last 8 years, that is a rate of growth - mission creep, job expansion - that is not only amazing but highly suggestive of a regulatory body that is suffering cancerous growth and terribly out of control.
And we ought not to forget that even these numbers represent a mere shadow of the dollar amounts that come from the ungrounded, fiat registry fees that are collected (and kept) by Verisign and the other registries - an amount that is on the order of a $Billion (yes "b"illion) each year.
And they say there are no taxes on the internet. Yeah, right.
--karl-- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Hi, There are too many unknown or dummy figures rolling about, propagation of which will further question the legitimacy of ICANN. I believe this highlights the need to get defined costing for each phase of the new gTLD process, rather than a lump sum at the beginning. Regards Cintra Sooknanan On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:21 AM, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net>wrote:
From a $9m conceivable ceiling to $66m in receipts within eight years? That really needs looking into. Does At Large have the wherewithal to lead on that?
Christian
On 14 Apr 2011, at 00:05, Karl Auerbach wrote:
On 04/13/2011 03:39 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
For fiscal 2010, ICANN's revenues from its core operations were reported at $65.77 million, an increase from the the $60.23 million reported for fiscal 2009. ICANN was able to grow revenues from Internet Registries to $31.91 million up from $24.54 million in 2009.
When I was on the board the projected estimate of the highest budget that ICANN could ever reach, ever was $9million(US), and that was to be a transient high with the ongoing rate being significantly lower.
The difference between that projection - $9million - and the actual - $66million - is on the order of 733%. Evening considering inflation over the last 8 years, that is a rate of growth - mission creep, job expansion - that is not only amazing but highly suggestive of a regulatory body that is suffering cancerous growth and terribly out of control.
And we ought not to forget that even these numbers represent a mere shadow of the dollar amounts that come from the ungrounded, fiat registry fees that are collected (and kept) by Verisign and the other registries - an amount that is on the order of a $Billion (yes "b"illion) each year.
And they say there are no taxes on the internet. Yeah, right.
--karl-- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
There are too many unknown or dummy figures rolling about, propagation of which will further question the legitimacy of ICANN.
I believe this highlights the need to get defined costing for each phase of the new gTLD process, rather than a lump sum at the beginning.
You have to fund and feed the ecosystem created by and around ICANN. IMHO the current gTLD program has been flawed since day one, there are still no solid or substantial arguments that show clearly the benefits of such program (besides enriching the ones actually profiting from it even before any new gTLD becomes real). One of the major goals and premises of exploring the creation of new gTLDs was to increase competition in the namespace, this program does not fulfill that goal. Verisign will continue to collect tons of money while laughing at those get-rich-fast venturers trying to compete with Verisign with silly and useless TLDs going bankrupt on year 1 or 2. Unfortunately the end user has no much saying or representation. I don't want to generalize, but some folks who claim to be representing them have never been selected or appointed by the end users, and by a fact I know cases when the end users needed their assistance, knowledge or "influence" and they just ignored them, not even replying to their requests. Many have developed sort of a professional career using their participation in the ICANN ecosystem as sort of a certification in Internet governance and policy development expertise/prestige filling up their resumes and multiple pages on Facebook with pictures of their religious assistance to the several times a year traveling circus to exotic places they would have never visited without ICANN. Anyway, ICANN still has something to be admired, it is one of the most profitable non-profit, generating record revenue per headcount, and being incorporated as a non-profit most of that revenue has to be spent .... My .02 Jorge
I can`t more agree with you Jorge. But, if it is true that the creation of New gTLDs is not enough to fulfill the goal to increase the namespace competition, at least give us (consumers and applicants candidates) in the posibility to participate in an almost monopoly market managed by the Big company and their " associated ", and also give us the posibility to change the situation. One of the liminar principles of ICANN is the competition & the consumer choice, in this order I consider the structure of ICANN need some improvements to guarantee that. Carlos Dionisio Aguirre NCA GNSO Council - ICANN former ALAC member by LACRALO Abogado - Especialista en Derecho de los Negocios Sarmiento 71 - 4to. 18 Cordoba - Argentina - *54-351-424-2123 / 423-5423 http://ar.ageiadensi.org
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:35:32 -0500 From: jmamodio@gmail.com To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN financials
There are too many unknown or dummy figures rolling about, propagation of which will further question the legitimacy of ICANN.
I believe this highlights the need to get defined costing for each phase of the new gTLD process, rather than a lump sum at the beginning.
You have to fund and feed the ecosystem created by and around ICANN.
IMHO the current gTLD program has been flawed since day one, there are still no solid or substantial arguments that show clearly the benefits of such program (besides enriching the ones actually profiting from it even before any new gTLD becomes real). One of the major goals and premises of exploring the creation of new gTLDs was to increase competition in the namespace, this program does not fulfill that goal. Verisign will continue to collect tons of money while laughing at those get-rich-fast venturers trying to compete with Verisign with silly and useless TLDs going bankrupt on year 1 or 2.
Unfortunately the end user has no much saying or representation. I don't want to generalize, but some folks who claim to be representing them have never been selected or appointed by the end users, and by a fact I know cases when the end users needed their assistance, knowledge or "influence" and they just ignored them, not even replying to their requests. Many have developed sort of a professional career using their participation in the ICANN ecosystem as sort of a certification in Internet governance and policy development expertise/prestige filling up their resumes and multiple pages on Facebook with pictures of their religious assistance to the several times a year traveling circus to exotic places they would have never visited without ICANN.
Anyway, ICANN still has something to be admired, it is one of the most profitable non-profit, generating record revenue per headcount, and being incorporated as a non-profit most of that revenue has to be spent ....
My .02 Jorge _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
I can`t more agree with you Jorge. But, if it is true that the creation of New gTLDs is not enough to fulfill the goal to increase the namespace competition, at least give us (consumers and applicants candidates) in the posibility to participate in an almost monopoly market managed by the Big company and their " associated ", and also give us the posibility to change the situation. One of the liminar principles of ICANN is the competition & the consumer choice, in this order I consider the structure of ICANN need some improvements to guarantee that.
One of the problems with the new gTLD program, if you don't look at the retail side of the biz, is that you will be creating additional small monopolies under control of a single entity each, which to be frank as far as we know from some of the players, they will be the same companies that currently run a TLD or are aspiring to run a collection of them, directly or indirectly. Real competition has to start at the top level, splitting for example the most dominant names, which as we know is a no deal thanks to previous negotiations that granted a single company the rights to do so to perpetually, then what we intent to do is to artificially expand the name space but by doing so you are not increasing competition, you are just increasing user's choice, which again was not one of the original goals even at the creation of ICANN. Unfortunately ICANN became the OPEC of the Internet name space (we'll leave the numbers out by now). Another .02 Jorge
On 04/14/2011 01:21 AM, Christian de Larrinaga wrote:
From a $9m conceivable ceiling to $66m in receipts within eight years? That really needs looking into. Does At Large have the wherewithal to lead on that?
A bit of history - back in 2000 when I was elected to the board one of the first things I did was to ask to review ICANN's financial ledgers. The result was 18 months of ICANN resistance, which required me to being legal action against ICANN, which despite ICANN's attempts to portray it to the contrary, I won, hands down. (And certain board members and board chairmen have not spoken to me since - which is to me a sign that many of ICANN's board members never really understood - and still do not understand - the oversight duty of a board member and, instead, view ICANN's board as a honorific gathering of worthies rather than a body that holds the plenary responsibility and power to "direct" ICANN.) ICANN, much to its credit, responded to the court order with a positive and cooperative spirit and immediately opened the ledgers. I found exactly what I had hoped and expected to find - nothing more than the typical operations of a small, new organization. Yes there were some problems - too much was being spent without proper authorization trails, the law firm was charging too much, etc etc. ICANN did fix many of these things. There was nothing nefarious in the ledgers. And I personally do not expect that a similar inquiry today would find anything worse than the typical unintended errors and mistakes of any organization. Nevertheless, the California legislature created that "absolute right" (yes the legislature used the word "absolute") of inspection for a good reason. It would make sense for an ALAC director to pull in an outside accountant to periodically take a look. The ALAC might need to come up with some $$ to pay that accountant. Again, don't expect to find anything terrible - but knowing that eyes are looking does tend to create more careful use of ICANN money. (And there were other things that I found - For instance ICANN did not have a body of employee policies, an employee handbook. As a result of my findings they did put one into effect - using their most expensive law firm to write something that they could have done for a few hundred dollars. The point of this is that ICANN when faced with multiple roads, it does have a history of taking the vastly most expensive one.) Had ICANN not tried to dance around the California law that defines a "member" form of a public-benefit/non-profit corporation than those of use who are members would have had greater powers of inspection than we obtain today from ICANN - see http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm#full-members --karl--
participants (7)
-
carlos dionisio aguirre -
Christian de Larrinaga -
Cintra Sooknanan -
John R. Levine -
Joly MacFie -
Jorge Amodio -
Karl Auerbach