RE: [council] FW: Proposal to form a Joint ALAC - GNSO WG "to develop a sustainable approach to providing support to applicants requiring assistance in applying for and operating new gTLDs" in response to the ICANN Board Resolution 20 at the Nairobi Meeti

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is interesting Bruce.  I had no idea that this motion was talking
about financial support; I thought it had to do with customer service
support related to the new gTLD process.  This puts a totally different
slant on this.

Chuck 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin
> Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 8:48 PM
> To: GNSO Council 
> Subject: RE: [council] FW: Proposal to form a Joint ALAC - 
> GNSO WG "to develop a sustainable approach to providing 
> support to applicants requiring assistance in applying for 
> and operating new gTLDs" in response to the ICANN Board 
> Resolution 20 at the Nairobi Meeti
> 
> 
> Hello Caroline,
> 
> 
> >>  I missed the Board meeting unfortunately and only have the
> resolution to go on for now. Can anyone enlighten me as to 
> what sort of assistance / support was envisaged - was there 
> more discussion on this at the meeting or was it left open 
> and therefore up to the proposed WG?
> 
> It was left open.  
> 
> During the EOI panel and various other forums during the week 
> in ICANN - there were members of the developing world noting 
> that the costs to participate in new gTLDs was high.  This is 
> certainly been a consistent message since the beginning of 
> the new gTLD process, and the original intent of the new gTLD 
> committee in the GNSO was to deal with this in a second round 
> of new gTLDs to avoid gaming in the first round.
> 
> The Board has simply made an open call for suggestions.   At 
> this stage
> they would need to be made on a cost recovery basis - ie 
> ICANN is not changing the rules or costs for new gTLDs at 
> this stage  ("ICANN has a requirement to recover the costs of 
> new gTLD applications and on-going services to new gTLDs").  
> The Board also noted that the application costs are a small 
> proportion of the costs of operating a gTLD at high
> levels of reliability.   The Board would be supportive if a group
> decided to form a foundation that organizations could donate 
> to, or would be supportive if some in the industry offered 
> some in-kind contributions (e.g some staff support or 
> computing resources) to helping applications from the 
> developing world.
> 
> Regards,
> Bruce Tonkin
> 
>