ICANN Wants to Let VeriSign Raise Prices on .Com Domains (theregister.co.uk)
68
VeriSign has released a "proposed agreement" with ICANN to amend their exclusive .com registry agreement to allow them to raise the price of dotcom registrations up to 28% every six years.
Those new terms "are now open to public comment" -- and the Register points out that ICANN's decision seems to come with a corresponding $20 million for ICANN: Operator of the dot-com registry, Verisign, has decided to pay DNS overseer ICANN $4 million a year for the next five years in order to "educate the wider ICANN community about security threats."
Even though the generous $20 million donation has nothing to do with ICANN signing off on an extension of the dot-com contract until 2024, the "binding letter of intent" [PDF] stating the exact amount of funding will be appended to the registry agreement that Verisign has with ICANN to run the dot-com registry.
That extension lifts a price freeze put in place several years ago and will allow Verisign to increase prices by seven per cent a year [in each of the last four years of each six year contract renewal]. It's an increase that we calculated was worth $993 million and which the stock market appeared to agree with when it raised the company's share price by 16 per cent when the agreement was first flagged in November 2018...
ICANN explains the $20 million this time will be used to "support ICANN's initiatives to preserve and enhance the security, stability and resiliency of the DNS, including root server system governance, mitigation of DNS security threats, promotion and/or facilitation of DNSSEC deployment, the mitigation of name collisions, and research into the operation of the DNS."
Which is all entirely above board and not at all shady.
Those new terms "are now open to public comment" -- and the Register points out that ICANN's decision seems to come with a corresponding $20 million for ICANN: Operator of the dot-com registry, Verisign, has decided to pay DNS overseer ICANN $4 million a year for the next five years in order to "educate the wider ICANN community about security threats."
Even though the generous $20 million donation has nothing to do with ICANN signing off on an extension of the dot-com contract until 2024, the "binding letter of intent" [PDF] stating the exact amount of funding will be appended to the registry agreement that Verisign has with ICANN to run the dot-com registry.
That extension lifts a price freeze put in place several years ago and will allow Verisign to increase prices by seven per cent a year [in each of the last four years of each six year contract renewal]. It's an increase that we calculated was worth $993 million and which the stock market appeared to agree with when it raised the company's share price by 16 per cent when the agreement was first flagged in November 2018...
ICANN explains the $20 million this time will be used to "support ICANN's initiatives to preserve and enhance the security, stability and resiliency of the DNS, including root server system governance, mitigation of DNS security threats, promotion and/or facilitation of DNSSEC deployment, the mitigation of name collisions, and research into the operation of the DNS."
Which is all entirely above board and not at all shady.
Is this like a cash grab before the end? (Score:5, Interesting)
I take it the executives of ICANN see the writing on the wall? Either DNS or they themselves are going to be soon replaced, might as well fill their pockets on the way out right?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Those new terms "are now open to public comment"
I can tell you beforehand what the "public comment" will be.
I also know they'll ignore it
So it goes.
Re:Is this like a cash grab before the end? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can tell you beforehand what the "public comment" will be.
Indeed "public comment" could hardly be a bigger joke with ICANN. You'll see just as useful a response by writing your comments in the bathroom at your local quik-e-mart. When ICANN opens something to "public comment" what they are really saying is that they've already made their decision and they are going to give people a little bit of time to prepare for it.
Re: (Score:3)
Looks like both Verisign and ICANN are looking to make all the alternate domains much more popular for anyone that isn't a huge corporation. You might consider that this is the intent, to drive small companies and individuals out of the .com market.
What extra value do you have? (Score:2)
What is the extra value do you have with paying more.
It isn't like these companies do useful necessary things with the domains. Such as verifying that you are who you say you are. You are not spoofing an other popular website.
Re: (Score:2)
I take it the executives of ICANN see the writing on the wall? Either DNS or they themselves are going to be soon replaced, might as well fill their pockets on the way out right?
This sounds exceptionally likely. Time to kick them, hard.
7% over 4 years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:7% over 4 years (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as percentages are involved, that simple math might just as well be magic to most people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Price (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I wouldn't hold out any hope that the ISPs and registrars will absorb the increase.
More likely they'll pass it on to their customers with an extra markup.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't hold out any hope that the ISPs and registrars will absorb the increase.
More likely they'll pass it on to their customers with an extra markup.
Every bit this, just like when the "redemption period" came along. VeriSign charged $40 to "redeem" a domain. Tucows/OpenSRS tacked on another $40. So that $12 renewal up to 30 days after a domain expired magically turned into $92 on day 31.
Re:Price (Score:4, Interesting)
$20 Million bribe to ICANN to get them to allow a price hike.
At that rate, it will drive out small businesses from having their own domains or internet presence.
Verisign has a monopoly on .com registry.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
At that rate, it will drive out small businesses from having their own domains or internet presence.
Really? Jumping from $10/year to $20/year is going to put mom and pop out of business? I realize that it's just one more paper cut in the "death by 1000 paper cuts" of business expenses, but this isn't going to move the needle on business expenses. Hell, I maintain 5 domains just for "fun". Doubling the cost of that may make me reconsider a couple of them, but the "business" I run is a different story.
$20 Million bribe to ICANN to get them to allow a price hike. ... Verisign has a monopoly on .com registry.
This is the part that pisses me off. There are no alternatives if you want a .com. And they can call
Re: (Score:3)
So buy your domain name in advance. Quite frankly I don't give a shit because my .com domain is registered (and pre-paid) to me for the next 20 years and the contract says that if in that interim the "yearly price" changes then whoever gets fucked just simply takes it up the ass without whimpering. That means that I give not a shit it the price of a domain registration rises to $1,000,000.00 per year because it does not affect me one iota.
The dirty unwashed spammers and fraud artists will get put out of b
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO the price of maintaining a "domain registration" should be based on the age of the domain. It should cost $1,000.00 for the initial year, $250.00 for the second year, $25.00 for the third year, and a few dollars per year thereafter. And it should be payable in advance -- no registration occurs until the payment has cleared and the time for EFT recourse has passed. That would get rid of all these domain spammer assholes that register 10,000,000 domain names for fraudulent purposes and then let them lapse when the cheque fails to clear the bank.
This I support. I think $1,000 is a little steep, but I support the concept. Even a non-refundable $100 "setup fee" would be cost-prohibitive to the spammer perspective, but not so much that a home-gamer such as myself is prohibited from obtaining a domain. A grand isn't "life changing" money, but it's enough that I wouldn't spend it on a hobby website.
Re: (Score:2)
There's more than a 100 root domains now. They aren't as popular but many of them can be had for very cheap, as low as a $1.50 per year.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, but many of them aren’t ‘supported’.
I tried to create an Apple account with my .email domain, and it wouldn’t take, after some back and forth with “support”, they determined that .email was not a “supported” domain. I’ve run into other problems using it too.
Some systems don’t think it’s a legitimate address if it’s not .com, .net, .org
what bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
that translates to:
how to increase the amount of money Verisign will be allowed by ICANN to print for themselves and their shareholders without doing ano more work.
this whole thing is nothing more than extorsion.
Re: (Score:1)
> Even though the generous $20 million donation has nothing to do with ICANN signing off on an extension of the dot-com contract until 2024...
Yeah, I believe that. I'm about to buy a bridge from them as well.
Re: (Score:3)
It’s clearly bribery. ICANN should be opening .com up for competitive tender. /.ers should make public comments along the lines of this being bribery and potentially opening the board up for criminal prosecution.
This is unpossible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is unpossible (Score:4, Interesting)
> Who could have imagine greed creeping in
They had a fig-leaf 'community process' in place before they canned that and just admitted pure corruption.
Don't like it? Work to make Namecoin better (or develop an alternative).
The issue is allowing people to make decisions. Solutions like Namecoin allow a protocol to govern. It's possible for a cabal to subvert a protocol process but much, much harder.
Centralized vs. Decentralized governance.
Re: This is unpossible (Score:2)
AFAICS every non profit eventually becomes a corrupt mess to enrich the board.
Maybe a non profit with say bylaws to give volunteers votes to determine the board could avoid it ... but for 99% of non profits moral hazard and time will corrupt them.
I blame the medical community. (Score:2)
If the medical community had found a way to make Jon Postel immortal, none of this would have happened.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why the ":Bureau of Sabotage" was invented.
Re: (Score:2)
The creation of ICANN as a non-profit essentially run by a single law firm was always guaranteed to create the situation we have now. There were lots of people pointing this out when it happened.
Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think you get it. Verisign is the exclusive operator of .com and ICANN decides who gets that role. Verisign is bribing ICANN to ensure that situation doesn't change and they are also allowed to make more free money.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
because there is no shortage of applicants for that position.
Name one... just one company that you think can do it, and I'll explain to you why you're so very mistaken.
It's not as easy as you might think to run the single most important database on the entire Internet. Think about it for a moment and you'll realize that I'm not exaggerating with that statement, either.
Re: (Score:1)
Amazon?
They do have the computing power and staff...
Of course, there's not even a thin veil to pretend there's a good heart behind it, but you asked who could run it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
But I guess your answer will be that they can't do it because they haven't paid the kickbacks and are thus not worthy. Anyway, DENIC has learned their lesson from the
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not as easy as you might think to run the single most important database on the entire Internet. Think about it for a moment and you'll realize that I'm not exaggerating with that statement, either.
Managing 150 million static records containing basic glue and contact information that rarely change is a trivially small undertaking by todays standards. Current yearly rate per record is already absurdly high and completely unjustifiable.
Especially when you consider the fact that domains are managed by third party registrars and VeriSign does not provide front end support for vast majority. VeriSign runs only two of the worlds root servers and is raking in well over a billion a year in net profit.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll run it on a spare Pentium box I have sitting in the corner of the room. It does not require much compute power at all. Now the distributed domain root servers is another issue, but that it not all that difficult to solve either in this day and age, especially if one gets a dollar or two for each registered subdomain.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I see what you mean. But the point is that Verisign is bribing ICANN, who is bribing other people, etc. That is how business is done in that world. Completely corrupt.
Re: (Score:2)
The why is right there in the summary; a $20 million kickback.
Why bother (Score:3)
Corruption is the name of the game in most of the world. Look at how bad the Olympics is.
I'm sure you are all shocked, shocked at this.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Walk away (Score:1)
Math is not hard work for them.
Want to stay part of the old "pay" for CoC internet that only the gov/mil and think tank supported academics can afford to use?
Try a new look "free" internet thats new and fun?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The smartest people will work hard for free for years
The server farm is free to invest in any network it wants... the old pay for gov/mil and think tank internet.
The fun new network thats open to all
Re: (Score:3)
Why do we not demand pricing to be driven by cost? When we permit TLD management to be a profit center, we pay and pay and pay. There is no limit. And profit brings new motives to management, as in highest bidder, and we will have no end of conflicts and shenanigans, none of which will do you or me any good, nor improve the system or services.
At some level, DNS should be non-profit. At this level, for instance.
Re: (Score:2)
Profit vs. Non is a separate issue. Non-profit organizations still have revenue-generating activities, so they're a lot like businesses, but with an additional public interest remit above making a profit.
They need to be mapped to icann.rico (Score:2)
They've flipped the evil bit
7% per year != 28% (Score:3)
The summary ignores compounding when it says that the agreement allows Verisign to raise prices by 28% every six years. The agreement says that Verisign can raise prices by 7% in each of the last four years of each six-year term. Four 7% increases is a hair above 31%, not 28%, so it allows Verisign to increase the prices by 31% every six years. A nit, perhaps, but one that's worth lots of money.
Over the course of 30 years, Verisign could increase prices by 387%. Somehow I doubt the cost of administering and serving .com domains is going to quadruple every 30 years. It's much more likely that it will decrease by a large factor.
OTOH, with the TLD expansion, there is now plenty of competition in the domain name space, and it may be that competition will prevent Verisign from raising prices too much. For commercial use ".com" is what you are expected to have these days, but that could easily change over the course of a few years, especially if businesses started using more focused TLDs. On the gripping hand, businesses may still feel obligated to buy the .com, just so no one can squat on it.
Re: (Score:2)
You'll want to buy up names in other TLDs, to prevent squatting. TLD expansion also has delivered new markets for profit. Good and bad, but overall new TLDs are good.
Re: (Score:2)
You'll want to buy up names in other TLDs, to prevent squatting. TLD expansion also has delivered new markets for profit. Good and bad, but overall new TLDs are good.
You missed the last sentence of my post.
Re: 7% per year != 28% (Score:2)
You missed my point. Not just .com, but so you popular TLDs. This gets expensive.
Return to the norm (Score:2)
Verisign won the right to raise prices 7% per year between 2007 and 2012 when it settled [cnet.com] the lawsuit with ICANN over Verisign's SiteFinder DNS spam. This seems like payola to get back on that same gravy train. Also, the US Department of Commerce could always step in open up the bidding to run .com the next time Verisign's contract is up.
All above board (Score:2)
"promotion and/or facilitation of DNSSEC deployment,"
Clearly this would not be an effort to share the loot with favored partners, all of whom need some encouragement to do the needful.
Encouragement measured, these days, in the Billions of Dollars.
Not even sharp practice. Just open graft. Watch all this carefully, now the 'owners'* of the Internet monetize at the system level.
* - owners as in they make the rules.
To everyone who said giving up..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sovereign control was a good idea. I fucking told you so. It took ICANN just a few years to become completely corrupt and mishandle TLDs. And this is after nearly 30 years of smooth and fair operation under the US government. Can we take it back now?
Compound interest (Score:2)
So [1 - 1.07^4] = 31% rise, not 28%.
And I can't figure out... (Score:5, Insightful)
... why it costs $12-$20 per year for *a registration*. (with DNS handled elsewhere.)
Please comment! (Score:3)
When I last checked, only 6 people had publicly commented on this issue. It's just an email message, so please follow the links and log your comment!
It's a license to print money (Score:2)