Domain Registration Related News
Budget woes plague Net administrator
July 2004
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers may be able to handle the Internet's
complex address system, but crunching its own
numbers may prove an even tougher job.
ICANN, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., is facing
a tight deadline to revise its record $15.8
million budget to placate a growing number of
rebellious registrars united in opposition to a
new fee structure.
The nonprofit corporation on July 19 convenes for
one week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where its
board of directors will vote on the controversial
budget, which nearly doubles last year's spending
of $8.3 million.
Proposed in May, the budget modifies a tripartite
fee structure for registrars, the ICANN-member
businesses that sell domain names to the public.
(Registries, by contrast, control individual
top-level domains like ".com," or ".info.")
The new fee structure combines a $4,000 annual fee
with two variable fees--one determined by how many
registrars are ICANN members at the time, the
other by how many domains a registrar sells.
Fearful that the combined fees could top $19,000
and put them out of business, 75 smaller
registrars have banded together to protest the
budget.
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