As I am not able to attend the Los Angeles meeting of ICANN, I sent the following comment to the GtLD workshop:

There have been numerous comments periods over this report in the past and what I want to state is not new, but it seems it has not been addressed in the report.

Basically, the report is based on the assumption that the current model for gTLDs is the only possible one. It assumes that domain names will be sold on a mass market, mostly through intermediaries, and that this will generate a profit.

Was it ever envisaged that there could be other business models that do not fit into that mould ? There are several but, unfortunately, it will be next to impossible to try them out. There may be TLDs for very small communities, or an advertisement driven model in which domains are given out for free. A dynamic DNS service, like DynDNS.org, but performed a the TLD level could not accommodate the registrar model.

Regarding the Application Fee for proposed new gTLDs: while the report states that “Implementation Guideline B suggests that application fees be designed to ensure that adequate resources exist to cover the total cost of administering the new gTLD process, and that application fees may vary for different applicants”, the criteria that will be applied to various applicants are not yet clear, and this is a sensitive area. Will that be a one-time upfront cost ? How do we set it to avoid eliminating good ideas from the start of the process and privilege those incumbent players with deep pockets ? Could that be a per domain name fee to be paid over several years once the TLD is up and running ?

In short, the way the application fee is implemented will be a key factor for the success of new business models.