[chapter-delegates] New Membership Level

[Jacek Gajewski]

Dear Carlos,

Carlos Vera wrote:

> Impossible to pay USD 75... this is only another way to say digital 
> exclusion and Internet only for those who can pay and live in 
> countries that can afford such expenses.


Thank You for a clear indication of what the new level really means to 
most of the world.

It seems we had the same discussion 5-6 years ago, when we have found
that even $35/year is prohibitive for most of the developing world. The
introduction of free membership gave a lot of momentum and fresh blood
to ISOC. With the .org being by far the major source of revenue for
ISOC it looks that we risk loosing of substantial percent of our
constituency for a negligible percentage of ISOC budget. Moreover the
spectrum of those few who will remain will be strongly biased.

Since these fees are not a significant source of ISOC income, but have
rather symbolic meaning, we can still discuss some non-zero fee, but
this should be strictly related to the level of income (or GDP) in a
given country and kept at the level which will not discriminate
countries like eg. Equador.

Dear David - can you tell us how the sum $75/year has been
calculated/estimated and is there any rationale, why this should be
a fixed sum same for the whole world?

Best regards,
Jacek Gajewski
ISOC-PL






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