[NA-Discuss] The TLD-less NYC

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 3 April 2011 18:29, John R. Levine <johnl at 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