ALERT: ICANN TO 'TAX' DOMAIN NAMES! @*Please Help Stop This Before it's Too Late!!*@

[rb1000@ix.netcom.com (Ron Bennett)]

In recent months ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 
has been quietly holding meetings (some secret) regarding the administration of 
domain names (an example of a domain name is: yahoo.com). Right now domain 
names ending in .COM, .NET, & .ORG are administered by Network Solutions Inc 
(NSI). Currently NSI charges $70 for two years and $35 each year thereafter.

ICANN intends to add a TAX (they call it a fee) of $1.00 on top of the 
registration fees people pay now. $1.00 doesn't sound like much, but consider 
that most taxes start out small and soon mushroom! This new 'tax' within a year 
or so could easily be $10, $20, $50, or possibly even more according to some 
sources.

Let's explore the details the ICANN 'tax':

1. It appears to affect all domain name owners in .COM, .NET., & .ORG.

2. It also appears to affect all domain name owners in ccTLDs such as .US and 
in other countries such as .AU (Austrialia), .BR (Brazil), .UK (United 
Kingdom), .DE (Germany), .NL (Netherlands), .TO (Tonga), .RU (Russia), and over 
250 others.

3. .EDU domains may also be 'taxed' since they're currently administered by NSI 
just like .COM, .NET, & .ORG are.

4. According to some sources ICANN also intends to 'tax' IP addresses too!

So to recap, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) 
intends to charge a 'tax' (they call it a fee) of $1.00 to start with. This fee 
could greatly increase without limit in the future and could mark the beginning 
of internet taxation of domain names. Some have suggested that if ICANN 
succeeds that in a few years they or some similar authority may charge a 'value 
based tax' on domain names based on their market value. So for example a person 
owning MYLITTLECOMPANY.COM could be faced with thousands of dollars of taxes 
because their domain name is appraised at an inflated value by some 
organization they never heard of and conducts much of their business in secret. 
Just ask farmers how fair property taxes are. The ICANN 'tax' is the beginning 
of the end of affordable domain names for everyone. This must be STOPPED before 
it's too late.

And keep in mind this ICANN 'tax' affects everyone on the net! If ICANN 
succeeds, expect your ISP rates to rise since ISPs often own numerous domain 
names and/or millions of IP addresses - they would have to pay the 'tax' on all 
of these - that could amount to many millions of dollars per year and ISPs will 
be forced to pass these costs on to you the consumer. So the ICANN 'tax' 
affects everyone and must not be ignored. 

YOU CAN HELP STOP THE ICANN 'TAX'!!

1. Please forward this message to your friends as well as post it widely!

2. Email or call your representatives in Congress. Be sure to mention the three 
year moratorium on internet taxes.

3. Visit ICANN's website http://www.icann.org/ and share your comments.


Except from ICANN's website regarding the proposed ICANN 'tax':

Funding. The White Paper suggested that ICANN should be funded by name or
address registries, presumably by allocation of a portion of the fee charged by 
those registries. Since ICANN is intended to be non-profit, and therefore 
revenues may only recover its costs, over time those fees will be adjusted to 
balance ICANN's specific funding needs, which are not yet clear. In the 
interim, ICANN has proposed to fund its future operations primarily from a fee 
of no greater than $1 annually per domain-name registration, an approach 
suggested (without a specific amount) by the White Paper, with the exact amount 
of that fee to be determined over time by ICANN's costs and the revenue 
generated by a particular fee level. Since ICANN is not yet fully functional, 
it has existed to date on private donations and credit, with some recent small 
amount of funds received from those seeking accreditation as registrars.

Excerpt regarding the charging of the 'tax' on IP addresses from Usenet:

Path: 
news1.epix.net!news-xfer.epix.net!diablo.cs.uofs.edu!nntp.primenet.com!cyclone.
news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!tor-nx1.netcom.ca!ns3.vrx.net!not-for-mail
From: richard@ns1.vrx.net (Richard J. Sexton)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: IP address tax
Date: 20 Jun 1999 20:22:56 -0400
Organization: none
Lines: 9
Message-ID: <7kk0l0$3se$1@ns1.vrx.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ns1.vrx.net
Xref: news1.epix.net comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains:277

Joe Sims, chief counsel for ICANN just said this on the IFWP mailing list:

"As for the $1 tax on domain name.  Yes, it will be reduced when ICANN's
board imposes a similar tax on IP addresses."

-- 
Richard Sexton  richard@mbz.org  Bannockburn, Ontario, Canada