I am sure just about everyone has heard about the proposed annual domain fees on .net domain holders, and ultimately .com, .biz and others from ICANN.

In a recent story on CNet, it was reported 75 cent annual fee will begin sometime in 2005. This should add approximately $4 million into ICANN’s coffers, with a purported additional $30 million or more if they expand the fee to additional top-level domain suffixes.

On the one hand — this is similar to the method US utility providers use to raise budget dollars — which in this case would keep domain management partially out of governmental funding (and subsequent oversight to an extent). The flip side is this ends up being a tax on the shoulders of individual domain holders. The ICANN has not yet been through a year without controversy, and this will surely make 2005 another tumultuous year for the group.

In other ICANN news, the organization has extended a public comment period through February for its Strategic Plan that will guide its allocation of resources and mission goals for three years through 2007.

Like them or hate them — ICANN is unlikely to close up shop. This is an opportunity for global comment into the group’s budgeting, targeted goals and projects. While planning documents are not always a thrilling, easy read, if ICANN reaps the rewards of domain fees noted above, they will have significant cash prowess and perhaps even more dramatic impacts on the overall Internet.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 7th, 2005 at 8:55 am, contains 245 words, and is filed under Open Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. The views and opinions in this blog post are those of its author.