Low Entry Fee as Beneficial to Interent's Long Term Interest

["Thomas Lowenhaupt" <toml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comments by Thomas Lowenhaupt, Director, Connecting.nyc Inc. 



Let me first commend the GNSO for its labors in creating the Final Report on 
the Introduction of New Top-Level Domains. It goes a long way toward enabling 
the fulfillment of a key ICANN role. I've several thoughts about application 
fees that might be helpful in making further decisions with regard to New TLDs.

Implementation Guideline B states that "Application fees will be designed to 
ensure that adequate resources exist to cover the total cost to administer the 
new gTLD process."

 From an economic standpoint it seems clear that a requirement that application 
fees fund the upcoming review process will succeed at minimizing ICANN's 
current expense budget at the cost of a reduced pool of applicants. Conversely, 
one might argue that lower application fees will encourage additional 
applicants and new ideas and result in the ICANN receiving larger domain name 
fees as these innovations develop, with the resulting new domain name and 
renewal fees trickling up to fund the various ICANN efforts. 

ICANN's fundamental governance structure and processes recognize that 
innovation arises from the bottom. Low application fees offer several benefits: 
more applicants, applicants from differing economic circumstances, innovative 
ideas, public access to new and innovative TLDs, increased revenue to fund 
ICANN's long term projects that support a growing and vibrant Internet.

With new TLDs a key mission of ICANN, it seems inadvisable that there be a 
requirement that application fees cover all costs associated with issuing such 
new TLDs. Are we heading towards a situation where all of ICANN's missions must 
be self sustaining? Are we moving toward a situation in which fees must offset 
expenses in other areas, e.g., security? 

It seems advisable to invest in the Internet's future with low entry fees.