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ICANN Plans to Charge Fees to .net Domain Owners
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?"
And where would this trend stop?
It wouldn't stop. Not until ICANN became less of an independant organization and more of an elected body.
Presumably it would be a hidden cost passed on by your registrar.
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
Yes, Im sure that they will keep it at 75 cents too.
At least until they rationalize that they need to raise more money.
Do you see where this is going? They can charge as much as they want, be it the measly 75 cents or $15.
(It's like the income tax. The gov't said it would be temporary--and small. But it wasn't temporary, and it's grown quite a bit.)
Keep your eyes to the sky.
So how exactly does this cause anyone real grief?
Self-referential sigs are rarely entertaining.
$0.75 plus the $0.25 cents they are already charging.
.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and .name domains. With the forthcoming .net charge, ICANN's cut of those domain name registrations would increase to $1 a year.
.net extensions when they impose a $2 additional fee. $2/year isn't bad, you'll say. But by then it will be $3 and they'll just keep sneaking those fees in. And what can we do to stop it?
From article: the group recently imposed a 25-cent annual charge on
and what's to prevent them from adding another fee next year, or in two years. Two years from now you might not remember they're charging a $1 for
No ... ICANN needs to be restricted. Severely.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They're upset because an unelected group is taxing an important part of the world's communications infrastructure, a group that, I might add, wields considerable power and has pretty much lost the respect of anyone that knows anything about them. BEGIN:TINFOIL I really have to wonder if Jon Postel's untimely death was entirely natural END:TINFOIL And that $.75 is just a start, like all taxing bodies they never know when to stop until they go so far that someone has to shoot them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There is no difference in requirements to purchase a .com, .net, or .org domain, so why should one have a different fee schedule from another?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
.... whats a penny, can't even buy a piece of gum right?
6 + billion people would result in a few dollars in my pocket, but that's not really the point.
The point is taxation without representation..
internet tea party anyone?
So why are they going to pick on us first? What's that about?
Those nice phone fees are where the legs of this fee grow from. The FCC line fee was introduced, and then increased under the same pretense -- "long distance rates will continue to fall, so even with increased FCC Line Fee you will see reduction of your overall bill". The hell it did.
So... I guess once this fee is applied and nobody's bottom gets removed from the high and mighty chair over this, there will be a fee increase, then another fee (for the regulation and patent disputes, for example), and another one (to help public schools pay for their domain names) etc.
All of those fees will be removed from the registrar's ads, so you'll see ".NET Domains for Only $5.95* " with fine print stating "Please note, additional fees and surcharges may apply" and final price will crawl up to $9 or more.
Look at cell phones and regular land-line phones... That's where it's heading.
Hyperom.com
when domains were $100.
See, a company I recently worked for had no qualms about registering 100 domains every other day for no other purpose than to use them for SPAM.
If the domains were $100 each, I am pretty sure that they wouldn't be burning through domains like that.
It's more a political question. "Should ICANN be able to use its power to raise that much money? Money for what?"
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
You are confusing centralized management with centralized servers. P2P would decentralize the servers, and not solve the management problem - if anything, it would -cause- problems.
I register FooCompany.com. Some guy on his server publishes FooCompany.com to his IP. Which server has the correct IP? You need a way to verify authenticity. Maybe SSL certs? Oops, those are centralized under a small handful of companies... Maybe GPG keys? We can see how all the other web-of-trust security systems have just taken the 'net by storm...
No, ICANN's purpose is to provide management of the namespace and make sure that someone can't just use FooCompany without having gone through a central source to do it. You can't have two FooCompany's in existance. (Aside from server hacking. Which, btw, becomes so, so much easier in a P2P resolution system.) The DNS system itself is already highly distributed in technical terms - a hierarchy where each level is distributed between several (or more) servers.
You can't turn something like ICANN into a global shared responsibility. You need some real management. If you pull that management out of DNS, you just push it somewhere else - making all 'net traffic require SSL certs or GPG keys or somethign else, which is still going to require a central authority. (Sorry guys, even GPG will have central authority's, since 95% of users would much rather pay $100 to a company to sign their keys than have to track down, call, and meet in person with a handful of 'net uber-geeks to get keys signed, and have to do that over and over everytime they get a new key.)
Do you think implementing a 75 cent fee is going to stop this? Even if a company owns a thousand, this will only cost them 750 bucks more.
Don't get me wrong, the problem you described sucks, but irrelevant to this topic.
--- The revolution will be digitized! - http://www.binrev.com/ ---
If you browse at -1, then what's the difference to you? Or are you concerned that other people may not be getting "The Truth?" Trust me, it doesn't matter, it's an internet discussion board. You sound like you would be someone who'd complain about the content of example postulates in discussions on logic or something because they're "biased." It's just a discourse, the content doesn't matter.
It only looks like there's double standards because of contradiction, but you actually need standards for the "double" variety to exist: something which casual internet discussion lacks in all respects.
A lot of this seems way over my head, so I want to make sure I understand everything correctly. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a government run organization, correct? They control who gets the Top Level Domains (TLD). Currently, companies like GoDaddy and Verisigns ( I'm assuming ) bid on chunks of TLD's. Then those companies sell them individually as domains to people. Currently there is a $.25 charge on each domain name. When Verisign's contract bid ends in 2005, ICANN is going to add an additional $.75 charge to each .net TLD. The reason people are upset is because they feel that the $.75 is unnecessary for what ICANN does. If I am wrong about any of this or if I'm missing anything, let me know. Like I said, most of this is a little over my head and I want to understand it better before I make any kind of judgement.
I recently contested $35 in bank charges. I did so because the way their system was set up to operate I do not feel that I should have been charged that much for a computer shifting numbers. I contested about $7 on my phone bill for a call that I don't recall ever being capable of making (some 10-10-27500 bullshit). I've contested $3 on my phone bill when the phone company tried to charge me for 3 months past service (read: I already paid and filed the bills and the invoice for those months was done). Even had a company try to get me to sign up for $7 of basic cable to save $15 off my cable internet (good deal), and I may have done it, if I hadn't asked "is this off my current rate or whatever it is at now (I pay $46, current is $58)." It is of course off the current rate, so I would be paying more.
Maybe you ask why I bothered. I mean, $35 was something, but $7? $3? That's hardly even enough money to go out and entertain myself for an evening. I do it on principle. I do it because I know the company expects me to blow it off and just pay it. I know that if they feel they can get away with that, then they will try on a regular basis. What happens when there's "just" another $3 charge on your phone bill a month? What happens when $3/month more doesn't satisfy them anymore? It goes up.
I'm not in the game of getting cheated. I look over my bills and confirm that nothing stupid was added on. I won't let these companies get the feeling that they can just do whatever they want without checks for me. Yes, it may only be $.75, but it adds up, and it sets a bad precedent.
What would it matter if you wound up spending $1000 more than you needed to in a year, all because there were some 1200 $.75 charges tacked on that shouldn't have? To me, that's where it matters most.
There's nothing quite as permanent as a "temporary tax".
Anytime someone in government tries to sell something as a temporary measure, keep your guard up -- either they're a fool, or they think you are.
ICANN's projected budget for 2003-2004 was in the region of $6M, and they looked pretty close to be breaking even.
What the holy badger-fuck are they going to do with another $3.8M? A 63% budget increase? Is the internet going to get 63% bigger? Or are they going to try to have 63% more fun? (from this looks of this, they need to try......)