[registrars] ICANN DNSO Budget & Its impact on the Registrar Constituancy
Fellow Registrars....
In the Names Council meeting Today i Voted against a
request to have ICANN fund approx $170,000 of the DNSO budget for the next
year.
As you are all well aware, a substantial amount of the
ICANN budget is funded thru assessments on the registrar constituency (approx
50%). This means that of any increase in the ICANN budget, 50 cents of
each dollar is assessed to the Registrars.
Each constituency should pay its fair share of the DNSO
operation and this proposal would pass a substantial burden from the other
constituencies over to our constituency and I do not feel this is
appropriate.
In my opinion, ICANN staff supported my position as
well and I would not expect the proposal to transfer this burden to be
approved.
Today's actions only reinforces my concerns that there may
be attempts this year to impose additional financial burdens for ICANN
operations & outreach (i.e. at large outreach) on us and we Registrars need
to be even more pro-active.
The impact on the registrars could be very
significant if we do not work hard and organize for increased
participation by ALL of our members in lobbying & advocating within ICANN to
prevent this from happening.
Some constituencies (i.e. Business & Non-Commercial)
have the attitude that they support ICANN thru the purchase of domain
names thru us and we registrars should use the funds that we collect from the
end user to support ICANN and that they should not be asked to fund ICANN thru
their constituencies. I disagree strongly with this view.
We are not allowed to pass these ICANN assessments thru to
our customers as additional charges (as Telco's are currently allowed to do) and
as such are forced in many cases to "eat" these
expenses.
It is for exactly the reasons I point out above that ALL
the members of the constituency need to be aware of these issues and work hard
to keep us from being additionally burdened.
Ken Stubbs
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