[ncdnhc-discuss] taking politics out of the .org delegation

[Marc Schneiders]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, at 10:23 [=GMT-0500], Rob Courtney wrote:
> At 12:01 PM -0500 3/4/02, James Love wrote:

> >Next, you would have to deal with the surplus.
>
> Are we certain there would be a surplus?
>
> There might be a substantial benefit to non-commercial organizations
> if the retail price of a .org registration was cut substantially,
> closer to cost, rather than charging a higher price in order to run a
> surplus/profit.
>
> I only raise it because a lot of people talk about .org as a cash cow
> when it might not be one.

In my opinion it _shouldn't_ be a cash cow. I have no objection against
funding non-commercial activities, if there is a 'profit'. But I
would feel very uncomfortable, if this profit would be very high. A
registry does not exist to subsidize things from the fees paid by
registrants. It would be a tax. Can ICANN impose taxes? (No tax
without...)

I am not against every form of funding by the new ORG. VeriSign e.g.
agreed to fund the DNSO (even if this came to nothing, not because of
VeriSign). The new ORG could do similar things, e.g. with regard to the
NCDNHC. But on a small scale, a few percent of the annual turnover.