I just renewed 3 of my domains (with godaddy), and at the checkout I see an extra $0.25 charge per domain, I click on the "ICANN Fee" link and got this:
This mandatory fee is charged by ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers: www.icann.org). and becomes effective on November 1, 2004. It is 25 cents per domain name registration year. Thus, the fee on a one year .com registration would be 25 cents. The fee would be 50 cents for a two year registration (i.e. 25 cents times 2). Additional years would be at 25 cents per year.

ICANN fees apply to .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and .name.
Can someone link me to an article on why/what this fee is for? Thank you.

The new ICANN budget was active on Nov. 1. The link can be found here: http://www.icann.org/financials/budget-fy04-05-22sep04.html

Each registrar is marketing the fee differently.

-Tom

This is from another thread where Nick Fuller, Communications Manager for GoDaddy.com joined in as "GoDaddyGuy:"

Originally posted by GoDaddyGuy
ICANN implemented a mandatory per domain fee in accordance with its 2004 budget. Go Daddy simply added the ICANN Fee to our shopping cart so customers would know exactly what portion of their domain purchase is going directly to ICANN. In fact, as a courtesy to its customers, Go Daddy actually lowered its domain registration rates so customers wouldn't immediately feel the extra $.25 fee imposed by ICANN. Go Daddy's shopping cart explains the mandatory ICANN fee so as to communicate fully with our customers. If ICANN decides to raise their fee in the future, the increase will be seen in the shopping cart. If ICANN decreases the fee in the future, or eliminates it, those savings will be passed on to Go Daddy customers. Whatever happens, Go Daddy customers will always be told about ICANN's mandatory fees. I'm not a big fan of GoDaddy, but I think we should all be directing our attention more towards ICANN. This new budget is a huge increase, almost doubling to $15.8 million dollars. Maybe GoDaddy is just trying to give us a heads-up...

I hope it never gets like our telephone bills in the U.S. - On my home telephone bill, I pay more for the taxes and regulatory fees than I do for the phone service itself! :eek:

really?
so i can be proud to stay in europe and having very low costs for phone calls...

but you in the US have cheaper internet connections, for that amount i have to pay for internet you could get a small oc3 line in the us

Damn that sucks and I was just about to register a domain. Guess not now.

Originally posted by FatalSw1tch
Damn that sucks and I was just about to register a domain. Guess not now.

You're joking, right?

No I'm not joking.

Not to be rude, but if a domain is not worth even that (25 cents), it probably is not worth registering at all. ;)

Found this site that might help people with what ICANN budget increase really means to Registrars,

http://www.icannbudget.org/impact_on_registrars.shtml

from the spreadsheet on this site
the real increase to Godaddy, $0.0057

so it looks like GD is just going for a price increase for themselves