[Chapter-delegates] [MemberPubPol] ISOC response to the NTIA's call for comment on the USDoC- ICANN MoU

[Vittorio Bertola]

Oscar A. Robles-Garay ha scritto:
> Vittorio,
> 
> And from your point of view, who should pay for that End User 
> participation inside ICANN?

I am not sure I understand the question. Users already pay for the 
entire ICANN to run, with an "ICANN fee" of at least $0.25 added to 
every domain name registration in a gTLD, paid by the final customer, 
which provides most of ICANN's revenues. Actually, it is absurd that 
users already bear most of the cost of the entire organization and yet 
are not represented at the decision making levels.

> Who do you think is interested in the ICANN matter (as end user) ?

I am, for example.
There are already 44 organizations from all around the world that are 
members of the At Large constituency, and more under consideration. 
There are blogs, newsletters, newspapers and various media that report 
regularly on ICANN activities to the general public, and if they do so, 
it is because their public is interested.
Of course, users are not particularly interested in the technicalities 
of running the DNS, but they are interested in the service levels and 
features, in privacy, in low costs and competition, etc. When Verisign 
launched SiteFinder, in a couple of days there were tens of thousands of 
outraged users complaining here and there over the Internet.
Thus I do not think it is fair to say that users are not interested in 
ICANN.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
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