Meeting in Madrid on 4th December 2000, CENTR considered the ICANN Staff Working
Paper 'ICANN Cost Recovery Structure for Domain Name Registries'.
CENTR members
expressed disappointment that, once again, a document impacting on ccTLD managers
and calling for public comment was published immediately before the scheduled ccTLD
meetings at the ICANN event in Los Angeles. This allowed no time for consideration
within the ccTLD community in advance of the meeting.
CENTR members believe
the document to be unacceptable and reaffirmed their position that funding of ICANN
must be in the context of a contract for services.
They further agreed that
it is inappropriate to categorise ccTLDs with gTLDs and to use domain name numbers
as a basis of calculating their contribution to ICANN.
CENTR has provided ICANN
with a draft contract for the services required and urgently await a meeting with
staff to discuss outstanding issues relating to the contract.
For the financial
year 1999/00, CENTR registries pledged voluntary contributions to ICANN of approximately
$850,000 in anticipation of progress in the establishment of agreements with ccTLD
managers. They do not believe it appropriate to formalise fee levels for the current
or future years without commencement of substantive discussions in relation to a
contract for services.
CENTR, and many in the wider ccTLD community, are generally
in favour of a flat contribution model, based on a total amount to be agreed between
ICANN and the ccTLDs.
CENTR members continue to support the concept of a bottom
up consensus driven body to manage the global technical coordination of the Internet
but feel that ICANN has not yet reached this goal.
Fay Howard
CENTR General
Manager
5/12/00