I was one of the two co-chairs of the original Applicant Support program WG in 2010 and believed strongly in it, Strong enough that we created a joint ALAC-NCSG-GAC group that convinced the Board to introduce the concept over the objection of the domain industry.
But things have changed, dramatically, since then. Based on that experience I challenge the ongoing relevance of Applicant Support as an end-user issue worthy of attention from At-Large.
We have the following lessons learned from the past experience and the aftermath of the last round:
- The intended beneficiaries of the AS program are *only* TLD registry applicants -- not registrars or registrants, and certainly not end-users;
- Given the existence of ccTLDs for every country and continental TLDs for Africa, Asia and Europe, the market need to create additional new registries to serve developing economies has not been demonstrated;
- We now have a number of gTLDs targeting registrants for whom cost of domains is a barrier. Creating these low-cost-model registries did not require Applicant Support;
- The last WG agonized over making regulations tough enough to prevent exploitation by applicants that didn't need subsidy, while still making it accessible to those that did. We utterly failed at this to the extent that NOT ONE registration for applicant support was delegated and less than five even made an attempt. Coming up with a new magic formula is simply not worth the massive effort to both develop and defend from the inevitable attack. (I vividly remember an early meeting we had on this at ATLAS 1 in Mexico, during which one registry applicant observer in the back of the room calmly said, "no matter what you come up with we'll find a way to game it." In hindsight he was absolutely correct, the only regulations that could prevent gaming were so tough that NOBODY could meet them. This situation has not changed since the last round; in the new discussion document the anti-gaming component remains contentious and unresolved (and IMO unresolvable);
- Applicant Support was intended to reduce the cost of the initial ICANN fees but not the ongoing maintenance costs or ICANN per-domain fees. Even the new proposals that suggest extra support for application writing etc do not include ongoing support beyond application. Given the emergence of unstable TLDs from the last round, any applicant viable for the long term will need to demonstrate financial stability based on the total cost of running a domain, of which the fee reduction of Applicant Support is a fairly small proportion. There are serious and valid concerns about the stability of any TLD applicant who would not be able to apply without the Applicant Support fee reduction;
- The registrant projections for new-TLD registrations have proven to be wildly overblown, and the sustainability promises of new applicants need to be evaluated with that in mind.
Some of these realities were learned during the Applicant Support WG's tenure, others were revealed later as the application round unfolded. Regardless of source, we now have observable realities that did not exist before the last round and would be ill-advised to ignore them.
I find the conclusion fairly clear. There is no market-based justification for the Applicant Support program, indeed it threatens stability by introducing registries on financially shaky ground. As a result. any ongoing support for Applicant Support -- by ALAC or anyone else -- is solely for emotional reasons such as community pride. These may be strong incentives but at least let's go in with open eyes.
- Evan