[At-Large] ICANN financials

[Jorge Amodio]

> 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