[pdp-pcceg-feb06] More input on group B report
Tor 3 Also states: "While at least one constituency believes that a governmental competition authority might be involved in the setting or increasing of contractual pricing provisions with registries, others believe that the global nature of gTLD registration means that the jurisdictional and timeliness issues associated with such reviews would make it unworkable." As was stated in the group meeting, It seems to us that timeliness of governmental competition authorities should not be an issue because of the requirement for registries to give 6-month notice of any price increases. Even for governments, six months is more than reasonable. Option 1 of the policy recommendations is a duplication of governmental controls that are already working and adds unnecessary expense. Forming a panel to determine dominance duplicates the function that governmental competition authorities are well positioned to do and are already doing. oR 4b: There would appear to be an inconsistency in this document. Regarding ToR 3, there is a concern about timeliness of governmental competition authorities but there appears to be little concern about timelines in developing budgets. The idea being communicated by this document seems to be to develop ICANN fees each year based on projected costs after lots of community feedback. And this would be repeated every year so fees would be reset every year? This could make it extremely difficult for ICANN to operate with a requisite degree of certainty from a funding perspective. ICANN could be put in a compromised position of having to operate on a year-by-year basis with very little predictability on a longer term and strategic basis. We clearly need more thought here.!! BTW...We are certainly NOT suggesting that there should not be community input but the level of input and "year-to-year" establishment of fees being suggested in this document seems unworkable. The last sentence just before the Policy Recommendation section says, "With that said, it is clear that ICANN's budgeting process is extremely large and complex and is worthy of detailed analysis and review in a separate multi-stakeholder process." It implies that we have ignored that the fact that ICANN has just finished a separate "multi-stakeholder input" process that resulted in the current strategic planning, operational planning and budgeting process? It is certainly reasonable to continue to refine that process, but, to start a new review process when the current one is still in its first year of implementation? That makes little sense to us.
|