ICANN Registrar costs.

An initial examination of the cost of becoming a domain registrar for .com, .net, and .org domains comes to $11,000 in non-recurring charges, plus $5,000 per year to ICANN, and an unspecified quarterly fee for each domain registered.

There are specific reporting requirements that would require additional time and effort to stay current with the database and payments, but not more than is currently involved in paying Network Solutions.



Details:
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation-financials.htm

There is a $1,000 non-refundable application fee to apply for registrar status, and a one-time $10,000 NSI software license fee, required for access to the SRS system.

For each year there is a $5,000 'annual accreditation fee', plus unspecified fees per domain payable to ICANN and NSI. This should not exceed $9/domain/year.


Tribune would need to operate a public HTTP and WHOIS server providing registration details on all domains handled by the registrar. There is no minimum or maximum fee set for registration. This obligation may be subcontracted.


http://www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation-application.htm
The registrar application asks for information on the size of the company and a list of all operational domain names under which the company does business.

http://www.icann.org/nsi/icann-raa-04nov99.htm
The ICANN contract includes a clause regarding 'prohibitions on warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars'. Further details on the ICANN site make it clear that this covers the holding of domain names for the purpose of resale, and is _not_ a restriction on registering domains for our own use.