ICANN Proposes Allowing Unlimited Fee Increases For .Org Domain Names
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GeorgeK writes: ICANN is proposing allowing unlimited fee increases for .org domain names, which currently are allowed to increase a maximum of 10% annually. That 10% annual cap on fee increases came about after the huge public outcry that ensued in 2006 when a comparable proposal to eliminate price caps was made, and successfully opposed by the public. It seems that ICANN did not learn from history.
Nat Cohen explains why the new proposal to eliminate price caps is a bad idea. Similar proposals exist for the .info, .biz, and .asia top-level domains, and are all open for public comment now (.org public comment period ends April 29, 2019). If these unlimited fee increases are permitted, it is likely that Verisign will seek to further increase their fees for .com and .net. I encourage readers who wish to oppose these unlimited fee increases to submit comments today.
Nat Cohen explains why the new proposal to eliminate price caps is a bad idea. Similar proposals exist for the .info, .biz, and .asia top-level domains, and are all open for public comment now (.org public comment period ends April 29, 2019). If these unlimited fee increases are permitted, it is likely that Verisign will seek to further increase their fees for .com and .net. I encourage readers who wish to oppose these unlimited fee increases to submit comments today.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
"What is the purpose of limiting domain name increases?"
Would it affect the cost to hold one? Not just the cost to initially register it? If so, unlimited fee increases seems to be a way to push 'regular people's' domains off the internet. Small projects, personal projects, volunteer projects etc.
I've bought lots of domains over the years, and have never participated in the 2ndary market.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
The fees in question are annual fees, so yes, this would affect the cost to hold domains.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I put in my 2 cents to them, not that it'll make a dent.
This is an anticompetitive practice aimed squarely at eliminating smaller organizations and non-profits from having a presence on the Internet.
It's deplatforming anyone who isn't absolutely chock full of cash and wants a respectable soapbox.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
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Yes, I get that.
But the largest "non-profits" have plenty of cash on hand. This isn't about eliminating salvationarmy.org (a non-profit which distinctly takes advantage of their workers and seems to do just fine for the upper echelons).
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ICANN used to be an organization for Netizens (Score:2, Informative)
Believe it or not I still have my ICANN membership card. I got it when ICANN first started, and they offer all netizens free membership.
ICANN used to be an organization for the little people. Now it caters to the wealthy and the powerful.
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how would you like to hold somecharityname.org, a name and site you've had for dozens of years, gets tons of traffic, is your main source of incoming funding from the public and avenue for reaching out and publishing information... then all of a sudden, .org registrations start tripling in price year-after-year. do you stick it out, or do you throw away all the branding, recognition, marketing, stationary, etc, etc, etc. and historical page rank data (age of a domain is absolutely relevant, and high on the
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So I can go to someone else who will register the same domain for me more cheaply?
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They're talking about the fees the .org manager charges to your registrar, so no.
If Verisign charges, say, Epik $50 for a .org, you're not paying less than $50 to Epik to register a domain with them (and they need to turn a marginal profit to stay solvent so it'll be a few dollars above that).
While we're on the subject, watch out for Hover/Tucows trying to charge people for domains that have been transferred away. They're acting borderline fraudulent these days - dunno what happened.
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That is free market capitalism.
What we have is an economy that is a mix of free market capitalism and rentier capitalism.
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Charge what the market will support only applies if others can sell the same thing.
This isn't for the re sellers most people buy their domains from. This means all .orgs go up because the one company that is allowed to sell them to resellers can increase it's price to whatever it wants.
So they're saying yes, you are a monopoly and you may raise your prices however high you want.
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What is the purpose of limiting domain name increases? They are all sold on the secondary market anyway, where these rules do not apply
Not true. I own multiple domains, and have owned many more over the years. None were bought on the secondary market.
Of the many I no longer own, I sold exactly one - a three letter .com just got too good a price to keep. No speculative domain at all - it was formed from the first, middle and last letters of my surname and used for years for a personal site.
None of my customers (I have done a lot of web site and web app development for SMEs over the years) has bought or sold a domain that I know of.
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It seems to me they did learn from history (Score:4, Interesting)
If something you are trying to do is met with general outrage, try again in ten years and it will probably be me with open arms.
Okay, and here's how to pay for it. (Score:3)
I propose to allow .org organizations to print their own money specifically to pay ICANN.
Blockchain crypto coin (Score:2)
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Naa, I wanna make 'em count it out the old fashioned way. Gives people jobs, maybe paper cuts, hazard pay, you know, keeps humans busy.
ICANN.FU (Score:1)
They can and they will. Duh. Fuck you /. mods and your sudden awareness of the myriad of issues with ICANN.
You're always complaining after tyranny has its boot on your throat. That doesnt do shit..
10% is way too high too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Lock it to inflation if you need something. It's not like the cost of equipment or manpower (thanks to increasingly near-complete automation) is going to increase costs over time.
In fact, you really could just make a single, nation-wide super-redundant system between say 10 of the largest universities, and handle 100x the requirements of managing the whole system, at an extremely small fraction of the cost, and then open source the design for other nations.
Then, it would be free to register whatever, plus some small cost for folks trying to register more than 2 a week or whatever to prevent exploits.
But no - we're currently in the era of hyper-corrupt rent seeking as governance. Doing more for a fraction of the cost is frowned upon for now.
Ryan Fenton
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Inflation where? .org is a global TLD, not a US one.
Make the books public. (Score:5, Insightful)
What do they even need the money for? Has running a root DNS server gotten more expensive? No, it's actually less expensive.
Publish your financials publicly if you think you need more money.
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What do they even need the money for?
Hookers and coke, of course.
Can't blame them.
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What do they even need the money for? Has running a root DNS server gotten more expensive? No, it's actually less expensive.
It doesn't matter... The Registry fee for .ORG is not available to help go towards paying for root DNS servers or the shared registry.
The cost of all that come from the $0.18 ICANN fee.
.com/.net/.org are quite overpriced already (Score:2, Interesting)
The .de CC-TLD is operated by a cooperative of ISPs. A domain under .de can be had for less than $2 a YEAR, permanently, not just as a promotion.
Evil points. (Score:2)
It's beginning to look like if if I want to do something truly evil and corrupt, or something that goes counter to everything I've ever stood for, all I need to do is have a "public comment period" to ignore before I make my move, so as to rack up enough evil-points to pull it all off.
I'll even get bonus evil-points if I bot-post a ton of pro-evil comments, and super bonus evil-points for disregarding all the actual public comments as fraudulent. There are tons of ways to tack on those bonus evil-points. I'
Only 5 days left. Is this what it looks like? (Score:2)
Shouldn't
Only five days left to comment,
Not profit (Score:2)
This is a stewardship of a public resource, they should not be milked in the first place. .org especially and as contrasted to .com
Whoring out the domain name space to a for profit subcontractor was the worst decision ICANN could have made.
Don't want to sound like a nutter, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please file comments after reading the articles! (Score:5, Insightful)
I strongly encourage people to read all of the articles in the summary and the proposed changes and to file comments. This is absolutely a money grab by the legacy gTLD providers who wish they could charge much more for domain names. Instead I'd like to see a reverse auction where qualified bidders would make offers for an agreement with a price cap and we see how cheaply people will go. PIR which runs the .org registry right now rakes in $90 million a year from registrations. There is no way on earth they need that much money to maintain a database.
See my submitted comments on the proceeding below:
I do not support the removal of the price cap provisions from the renewal of the .org gTLD agreement. These provisions which limited the price of registrations and allowable price increases for registrations, are important to allowing small organizations, especially non-profit charity organizations to exist on the Internet. Many of these organizations have long-held .org domain names and a substantial percentage of their meager funding is tied to donors being able to find them via those domains. The massive potential price increases (as opposed to the moderate ones that are already possible) would prohibit smaller organizations and personal projects from having a place on the Internet.
Let me be clear, there is no inherent 'worth' to domain names and no registry 'deserves' to profit from the sale of domain names. These are in infinite supply and simply a ledger entry. They are not a product where the registry provides any innovation nor are they a product which costs any substantial amount of money to produce. The costs of domain registration must ONLY cover the costs of administering said registry which are very minor costs given the automation level possible.
While I understand that legacy gTLD providers are upset that they are limited in what they can charge when newer TLD providers are not they do have a distinct advantage of being more recognizable and are thus more than making up for it in volume. The greed of gTLD providers should not be a reason to allow unreasonable price increases. If a legacy gTLD provider does not feel they can cover their costs in a price-capped arrangement we should instead seek out a new provider for the gTLD. I'm certain that there are many organizations who would be more than happy to take over the oversight of these legacy gTLDs while still agreeing to the price caps.
Indeed I would support a reverse-auction of qualified bidders for all legacy gTLDs where the winner would be the organization which would guarantee the lowest price for registrations. THIS competition would best serve the users of the Internet, not the opposite which is to remove price caps.
Let me quote from an excellent article on this subject which well explains why competition is a false idea in this marketplace -- :
"If price caps are eliminated, competition will not keep prices in check. Competition is effective in restraining prices only if registrants can easily switch one domain name for another. An organization's domain name becomes its online brand for the life of the organization. Moving to another domain name requires undergoing the hugely expensive and disruptive ordeal of rebranding and is to be avoided at nearly any cost. Organizations wish to continue using their existing domain name, for which there is no adequate substitute. When there is a unique product that cannot be easily substituted for any other, there is no effective competition.
In the absence of competition, registrants can be protected from extortionate pricing only through pricing constraints, such as price caps. ICANN as the trustee for the legacy name spaces has the responsibility of an owner"
Sincerely,
Dr. Benjamin Franske
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There are multiple registrars, but there is only one registry. All the registrars charge the registry's base price + markup. There is competition on the markup, but not the base price.
POST YOUR COMMENT! (at ICANN) (Score:3, Informative)
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The address to send your comments to is comments-org-renewal-18mar19@icann.org