Local cost related to running a TLD

[Tan Tin Wee]

Yes, indeed your .02 is correct, correct as of the standpoint
of a person from a richer developed country living in San Antonio
USA. For me, I understand that as a person in a rich developed
country like Singapore. It is not a hot dog stand, really.

But for a developing country, do you think that a 1Million
dollars for IDNs makes any sense? they might as well train the
population to read English! Better value for money! Or save a
million kids from some horrible infectious disease.
And for IDNs, well, if we have to run it, we can only afford 90K.
Won't you consider this correct too? from their standpoint.

For such a developing country, you want them to run a one
million dollar operation for a few tens of thousands of IDNs,
it is simply just not cost effective. So they might as well
back off. And then, what is the point for me to invent IDNs
and advocate it for the past 12 years? For rich countries to
take over and make more money out of the poor?

Let's take a positive approach to things. Accept that the
digital divide exists. Linguistic, technical and financial
barriers exist. That's the reality of today's world.

So to promote some desperately needed mutual understanding, especially
for those who don't know enough English for them to argue
successfully in the ICANN forum or in this mailing list forum,
can you guys not consider their fate, just for a moment?

To you, TLD operator/registry is gTLD, loads of money involved.
Shouldn't you care more than 2 cents worth about the
poor left-out countries. So it took ICANN a decade to implement
the IDN market, lump it with lucrative gTLDs, and now to
arrange it such that only developed country entities can afford it.
And then to hear it announce to the world, we are bringing multilingualism
to the Internet world, presumably for the rich to make more money,
make more money off the poor? the non-English speaker native
speaker? locked out of the Internet because of inadequacy of
reading English characters?

If it is only myself that feels outraged, than I feel really sorry
for the Internet community. Maybe, it is time for me to leave.

So if you want to do new ASCII gTLDs, go ahead and do the 1M operation
with CEOs with loads of bonuses, best practices, ISO9000 certified etc
etc. But for the poorer developing world who needs IDNs, can ICANN consider
waivers and aid to help run "proper" non-hot dog stand registries,
or consider a more realistic level of operations that is a little
bit better than a hot dog stand, maybe $100,000 a year operation.

Please? for decency's sake?



On 3/18/2010 9:48 PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
>> Let's round it to $90,000 a year for a properly run registry.
>
> This is completely unrealistic and off by at least an order of
> magnitude if you want to run a real/serious registry. You really need
> to review the technical and operational requirements to be/run a TLD.
>
> A registry/TLD operator is not a hot dog stand.
>
> My .02
> Jorge