Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] The GAC weighs in on MR2

[ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Evan,

Thank you for forwarding the pointer to p12 of the GAC comments on the DAG
(April 15th, 2011 version).

My own reading is that the GAC has substituted "countries" where we have
used "economies", which is not a substantive difference [1], and has endorsed
an applicant capability for the base fee consistent with our recommendation.

I was very happy with the outcome of the Cairo meeting, where Marcus Faure,
then and now the Chairperson of CORE, myself, then a consultant for CORE, met
with ICANN's COO at that time, Doug Brent and proposed reducing the annual fee
from $75,000/yr to $25,000/yr.

However, there are two reasons not to be too eager to adopt the GAC proposal
to waive this fee until the fourth year of registry operations. First, under
the single-contract model, which I personally think needs only to be extended
to a few-contracts model, allowing for a single contract for registries that
follow the no-policy-but-contract business model {com,net,org,biz,info,...},
and as few as a single contract for registries that follow the policy-plus
business model {.coop,.cat,...}, the cost to perform contract oversight by
ICANN is shared across two or more registries (perhaps hundreds), and is no
longer a "unit cost". Second, under the cost-recovery model, given the real
experience with the performance of contract oversight [2], registries which use
only the contract for policy guidance consume more ICANN resources than do
registries which augment the base contract with sponsor, or similar, sources
of policy, and those registries which consume more ICANN legal staff and
contractual compliance resources should not be subsidized by those registries
which consume less of these precious resources.

Therefore I suggest we propose a pricing differential reflecting actual
costs, subject to periodic review, as an alternate to leaving the annual fee
at $25,000/year, with the first $75,000 credited to the needs qualified
applicant. 

Eric

[1] Where the difference between "country" and "economy" is substantive,
e.g., an application by the Sami minority in Scandanvia and the Kola Peninsula,
an application by the Native American/First Nations minority in North America,
an application by the Romi minority in Europe, etc., the JAS, and we believe
the GAC as well, support some form of exception in recognition of substnative
differences in material resources and access to capital.

[2] Commuication of ICANN Registry Liaison Craig Schwartz, mentioned in prior
mail to the soac-newgtldapsup-wg mailing list.