On 3 April 2011 18:29, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
- I believe that there are Board members who are more likely to reject our entire package if questioning the $100k is a major component.
Since one of the goals of the new TLD program is to maximize ICANN's revenue, how about suggesting that they raise the price to $250K, and use the extra to subsidize the impoverished worthy groups who can afford all of the other expenses of running a TLD but don't have $185K lying around?
I've actually been wondering about this, If the GNSO policies demand "cost recovery", and staff has determined via statistics and magic that it costs $XXX to process an application, and we want to cut a break for certain applicants, then it's not unreasonable to charge the needy XXX-something and other applications XXX+something. If $XXX is truly $185,000 -- and staff is adamant not a penny less... then John's logic is reasonable. Since the number of applications meeting the subsidy requirements are surely to be a fairly small proportion of the total, raising the general price to $200,000 would certainly allow the price for less advantaged applicants to $100,000 while still maintaining cost recovery goals. That's one approach. My own has been to dispute that the entire cost to date of the TLD policy development process -- including the grief ICANN had with .XXX -- should not be amortised into the cost-recovery calculations of applications going forward, and as such the price for everyone should drop. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. - Evan