ICANN is like a governmental agency in many ways. It constantly seeks to expand it's power and influence. It constantly demands more of everyone else's money to fund this expansion. It feels it know's what best for everyone else and seeks to impose it's will upon them. It constantly tries to avoid oversite and wants to be answerable only to itself. It seems to me that unlike actual government agencies - at least here in the US and not in a country like, say North Korea, ICANN does has virtually no oversite. Their board members elect themselves. They claim they are not subject to the administrative procedures act. They seek to unilaterally modify contracts. Much of their operations have been conducted in secret to the point where even one of it's own board members was denied access to it's financial records. ICANN now claims that they need $20,000.00 annually to assist and police my company operations. Since we have been accredited, we have heard from ICANN about 5 times. Three of those were automated emails when people complained about whois data. Two of those were to get our response to the mandated RRP to EPP transition. Other then looking for more ways to squander my company's resources (both time and money) by doing things like making us switch from a perfectly working protocol to one that is full of holes, what is it about my company that costs ICANN any money at all? If ICANN really is spending $20,000+ per registrar, then they are doing way, way too much of whatever it is that they are doing. Regarding the provision in their budget proposal where they can forgive part of this money, where are the objective standards that will be used for this evaluation? Or is it a completely subjective process whereby they can reward registrars they like and punish those they do not? ************************* James W. Archer CEO http://www.RegistrationTek.com