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ICANN Plans to Charge Fees to .net Domain Owners

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the easy-budget-increases dept.

museumpeace writes "ICANN, though it was soundly rebuffed for trying this in the past, is reported by CNET to be planning a $.75/ year fee to holders of .net domains and will look at fees for other TLD's next year. Is this taxation without representation? And where would this trend stop?"

4 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Re:75 cents? by BobPaul · · Score: 4, Informative

    RTFA... it's $0.75 plus $0.25 they snuck in just recently... Notice how they're sneaking those in? You'll be paying a dollar and you thought it was only $0.75... Slippery slope, isn't it?

  2. Re:Why pick on us .nets? by Geekenstein · · Score: 4, Informative

    RTFA.

    It clearly states that Verisign's contract to run .net is coming to an end in June 2005, and ICANN added the $0.75 fee as a requirement for the companies bidding to operate the TLD. When the others come up, look for the same trick.

  3. Content in signature by Kaseijin · · Score: 3, Informative
    Wait, you can get karma just for saying you have an idea?
    NoMoreNicksLeft's signature:
    --
    Build an internet incorruptible by corps and goverments.
    Metanet
  4. Re:question.... by Baricom · · Score: 4, Informative

    please forgive my ignorance, but what does icann do?

    You're forgiven. :)

    Okay, here's how it works. You know how the tech community likes to tell newbies that nobody controls the Internet? Well, that's not entirely true. At the time the Internet was founded, peer-to-peer was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today, so you needed somebody to keep all the important information about computers on the Internet, to prevent it from melting into anarchy.

    Various organizations (and in particular, Jon Postel) had different sets of these responsibilities until 1998, when ICANN was founded. ICANN is a non-profit corporation with a U.S. government contract. They are responsible for assigning IP addresses (so there's no duplication), running the DNS system (so mere mortals can get to Slashdot without having to memorize IP addresses) and other more mundane tasks specified in various RFCs, such as tracking well-known port numbers and MIME types.

    So, ICANN and its subsidiaries basically represent a government-sanctioned monopoly, like the phone company used to be. Other companies and non-profit organizations occasionally try to create alternative DNS services, such as OpenNIC, but they don't usually get very far because ICANN, in its official capacity, squishes them like bugs.

    I may be hazy on the details, but I think this is accurate enough to get you started on your own research.