[At-Large] Auction Proceeds - where we are and what you can help

[Roberto Gaetano]

John,

> There's a separate question of what to do with the extra application money.  Personally, I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for the dire conditions of speculators and marketers who applied, and I'd treat the extra the same way as the auction money, use it to support projects relevant to ICANN's charitable mission.

I agree, with one caveat.
(disclaimer: I am the Chair of the Public Interest Registry, who has applied for 4 IDN TLDs)

I think that there are different categories of applications - brand promotion, geographic localisation, community interest, and so on.
One set of applications was about IDNs, that I believe are part of the strategic objective to bring the Internet to everyone, including the ones who are using a different script. I am not claiming that in these cases money should be “refunded” to the applicants, but money could be used to offset the fixed fees that the registries have to pay anyway to ICANN regardless on whether the IDN TLD is making money or not.
In simple words, I believe that ICANN should recognise that these TLDs are being developed for pursuing an overall objective - that was, incidentally, the reason why ICANN created the conditions for IDN TLDs. To request a fixed yearly fee even if there are few registrations in the case of TLDs that have been delegate pursuing an objective of widening the access to the Internet to people who would otherwise have been excluded does not seem to be fair. And, more importantly, will not be an incentive to registries to apply for more IDN TLDs in the next round, therefore vanishing the effort that we have done so far.
Of course, I am speaking of the IDNs because I am aware of this situation, but the same reasoning might apply to some community TLDs.
In short, to reply to John, full agreement about speculators, but there should be a way to distinguish between who acted for profit and who acted for providing a tool for the communities that have been underserved so far.

Cheers,
Roberto

PS: in re-reading my text I realise that I might have gone off topic, because I am addressing the issue of application fees rather than auction - sorry