The Price of a .Com Domain Is Set To Rise, and Some Sellers Aren't Happy (engadget.com)
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: If you're the sort who buys domains for fun, or to inspire you to start a future project, your hobby's about to get a little pricier. ICANN is just days away from ending a consultation into the future of the .com top-level domain that'll put an end to Obama-era price freezes. If successful, it'll see the cost of a .com address rise by two bucks by the end of 2026, and potentially more thereafter. Verisign has the exclusive right to sell .com domains, and since 2012 the price of a .com has been frozen at $7.85. ICANN and Verisign are planning to reverse the freeze, allowing the company to increase its price four out of every six years, potentially in perpetuity. The other part of the deal will offer Verisign the right to operate its own registrar for other domains it offers, allowing it to compete with other DNS businesses.
Price-wise, Verisign will be able to increase the wholesale price of a .com name by up to seven percent for four of the next six years. That means that, potentially, the cost of one such domain would rise to $10.26 by the end of 2026, although existing owners will have advance notice of any change to lock in existing prices for up to 10 years at a time. The cause of this is a desire to roll back an Obama-era initiative, something that the Department of Commerce has been open about. In 2018, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce pretty much said so. "In line with policy priorities of the Trump administration," it explained in a release, "the amendment repeals Obama-era price controls." The other issue is a change to the rules about vertical integration, specifically about what Verisign can and can't do with the domains it sells. ICANN wants to bring Verisign's rights broadly in line with other registrars, allowing the company to operate a TLD and act as registrar. Whereas before, the documentation said that Verisign couldn't compete at all, now the rule is to be shrunk to only apply to .com, and not .net or any other domains it offers. Richard Kirkendall, CEO of rival domain registrar Namecheap, is accusing ICANN and Verisign of a stitch-up, saying the body has a "history of making similar deals behind closed doors" -- even though the announcement has been public for nearly two years.
The Internet Commerce Association, a body representing domain registrars like GoDaddy, is also objecting the deal. "It says that, because Verisign is the only company that can offer .com names, it has 'an effective monopoly,'" reports Engadget. "And that because it costs less than $3 to actually process a DNS registration, the company could have room to operate uncompetitively."
Price-wise, Verisign will be able to increase the wholesale price of a .com name by up to seven percent for four of the next six years. That means that, potentially, the cost of one such domain would rise to $10.26 by the end of 2026, although existing owners will have advance notice of any change to lock in existing prices for up to 10 years at a time. The cause of this is a desire to roll back an Obama-era initiative, something that the Department of Commerce has been open about. In 2018, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce pretty much said so. "In line with policy priorities of the Trump administration," it explained in a release, "the amendment repeals Obama-era price controls." The other issue is a change to the rules about vertical integration, specifically about what Verisign can and can't do with the domains it sells. ICANN wants to bring Verisign's rights broadly in line with other registrars, allowing the company to operate a TLD and act as registrar. Whereas before, the documentation said that Verisign couldn't compete at all, now the rule is to be shrunk to only apply to .com, and not .net or any other domains it offers. Richard Kirkendall, CEO of rival domain registrar Namecheap, is accusing ICANN and Verisign of a stitch-up, saying the body has a "history of making similar deals behind closed doors" -- even though the announcement has been public for nearly two years.
The Internet Commerce Association, a body representing domain registrars like GoDaddy, is also objecting the deal. "It says that, because Verisign is the only company that can offer .com names, it has 'an effective monopoly,'" reports Engadget. "And that because it costs less than $3 to actually process a DNS registration, the company could have room to operate uncompetitively."
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and ICANN could have people there who cared about the internet infrastructure and not money - you know the guys who approved the .sucks domain specifically to forece companies to buy up the domain name before others could. You'll note a company buying one was set to cost $1000 and an individual $10 (IIRC)
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Maybe if people didn't sit on domains, this wouldn't happen. You know dog shit, supply and demand?
Domain kidnapping too A domain I ran was not in my name, and the people i was working for let it lapse. Some assholes in Louisiana snatched it up the second it lapsed, and tried to sell it back to them.
Stupid people didn't use auto-renew, but holding domains for ransom is a dick move.
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Obama was the one who ultimately gave up our control. He should rightfully take the blame for this. This is ICANN leadership trying to get rich off of what should be a essentially a public service for the world. The costs of registering domains merely there to 1: fund their operations and 2: create a basic barrier to entry to prevent people from mass registering domains they don't intend to use.
Nobody should be profiting off of it.
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Trump isn't raising the price, he has no say in the matter. ICANN is. Ultimate authority over domains used to be held by the federal government. The previous arrangement was that ICANN was allowed to manage it but any decisions they made could at any time be over turned by the US. This gave us the status quo we were used to until 2016 when the Obama administration relinquished control for no apparent reason. Now ICANN, a private unelected organization has control over how TLDs are handled. Almost as soon as
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Well, TFS says "The cause of this is a desire to roll back an Obama-era initiative, something that the Department of Commerce has been open about. In 2018, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce pretty much said so. "In line with policy priorities of the Trump administration," it explained in a release, "the amendment repeals Obama-era price controls.", so you may be wrong.
The only reason GoDaddy is against the deal (Score:5, Informative)
Is because they squat basically any whois search out there. If you're looking to see if a domain is available, GoDaddy will own it within seconds.
Let the price go up, businesses won't notice a $5 price hike unless they own 1000s of them and they don't use them.
Re: The only reason GoDaddy is against the deal (Score:2)
If it's such a small amount, why should we allow it to rise at all? If it doesn't cost the purchaser much, then it doesn't profit the seller much either. Let the greater economy use the savings for something else.
This isn't a competitive free market situation where we can let the markets decide. It's a monopoly on basically the equivalent of bottled water.
So there is no real justification to allow a price increase or change the status quo. A better solution is maybe have a blind reverse auction on the mon
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Is because they squat basically any whois search out there. If you're looking to see if a domain is available, GoDaddy will own it within seconds.
I've never used GoDaddy for a registrar, own several domains, and have never had a problem buying or even renewing ones that had expired and I changed my mind 6 months later. Mind providing some evidence to dispel your bullshit theory that a registrar "owns" millions of domains?
Unilever is the largest domain name owner https://www.msn.com/en-us/mone... [msn.com]
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Unilever is a US conglomerate of many well-known brands. They're not GoDaddy, nor are they a registrar. The fuck was your point here again? IBM holds a shitload of patents too, but IBM is not what's wrong with the patent system.
Just as I own several unused domains, So does Unilever. The original commenter would assume that these domains were owned by GoDaddy.
Pay attention, Coward!
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I agree with you. As long as I pocket the price increase.
Why would Verisign profit from this?
Much ado about nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
When you consider the real costs of running any kind of web site worth visiting, the cost for domain registration is pretty minimal. Even with this "big price increase", they're talking about it costing under $11 to register a .com domain by 2026? If that's a deal-breaker for someone, then I doubt they're going to be successful with their venture anyway.
Look how many times the cost to obtain a domain name runs into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars because someone already has it, and someone else wants it?
That said? GoDaddy has a valid point, IMO, that they've created a monopoly situation for domain registration. As long as the system requires one central body to manage it at the top level, the pricing does require regulation. I don't think Obama's "price freeze" was realistic to keep in place indefinitely -- but probably needs to be some sort of arrangement where the cost is tied to inflation.
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Many people who run websites are not big companies but are individuals, non profits, churches etc. Its just the whole principle of the thing. The domain registry being a public utility should be run on a non-profit basis and offer the domain names to registrars at cost. Only with the registrars, where there can be fierce competition, is it appropriate to allow profits.
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Yup, and domain squatters whose domain landing pages are full of "buy thei premium domain" should automatically forfeit the right to have it - if its up for the sale, its not used, and if its not used, it should be available to someone who actually wants it.
But ICANN will never do that, they like the money they get from selling domains to cybersquatters.
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:2, Insightful)
if its up for the sale, its not used, and if its not used, it should be available to someone who actually wants it.
"If it's up for sale" then it IS "available to someone who actually wants it" - no need for government intervention.
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:2)
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Sure for $500 or more only because some asshole with a bot grabbed it strictly for the purpose of reselling it to a real human who wants to use it. How much money have you made off selling domains?
Replace "domain" with "concert tickets" and tell me what your point is again. Last I checked, StubHub is legal. So is eBay.
If you're against automation scraping limited resources, then address that. Otherwise, let's stop whining about the kid who got there first.
Nope, not made a single dime reselling domains.
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He is addressing it - by making it more expensive to hold on to resources indefinitely. Same as a landowner having to maintain the property to county standards and pay taxes regardless of whether he uses it.
When there's no real cost to hold on to a resource, speculation basically becomes theft. You may not like that path to addressing the problem, but it is a legitimate path.
I made the down payment on my house by selling a pair of domain names. But I didn't buy the domains to flip them, they were my primary
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He is addressing it - by making it more expensive to hold on to resources indefinitely. Same as a landowner having to maintain the property to county standards and pay taxes regardless of whether he uses it.
So, in your example (landowner), you propose raising taxes to an obscene level to where only the rich can afford to purchase and hold resources "indefinitely"? Tell me again how the hell that will work out well for the masses who would like to (and need to) own land.
When there's no real cost to hold on to a resource, speculation basically becomes theft.
Again, you're complaining because some other kid got to the candy first, and he's not sharing. If the domain name is of that much value to you, then you justify the cost to buy it. Same goes if you want to plant a business in downtown San Fra
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:2)
Why are non-profits and individuals tying up dot.com addresses? Why not use .net, .org, etc?
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:4, Informative)
You did see where ICANN is about to do the same thing to .org domains right?
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The actual and serious problem is that this is the wedge meant to destroy class neutrality, and it's a common tactic of the upper class.
I only hope you are Poe-ing us. Otherwise you need to up your Latuda prescription.
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The actual and serious problem is that this is the wedge meant to destroy class neutrality, and it's a common tactic of the upper class. If you make things too expensive, you price poor people right out of personal freedom and the right to choose, and you elevate the affluent to a privileged status where the ordinary people are restricted exploited in every way, solely for the economic benefit of the upper class. It's just a way to ensure they stay on top and the rest of us stay on the economic bottom. The fact that the rates are allowed to keep rising is a dead give away concerning the true motives of the people in charge. Start small now, but after steady increases, look at the unnecessary profits they will generate, and by doing nothing. Typical trademark of a scam.
Don't be fooled folks, this is clearly more corruption in action, and financial death by a thousand small cuts. The cumulative effect of all of these corrupt, unjustified constant increases is bleeding our economy dry.
20 years ago a domain registration with Network Solutions would cost $35 per year, and there were no free platforms (Tumblr, etc.) to host your content. Today, it's far less than that, and you've got a shitload of registrar competition.
Just because today's generation gets offended over any price above FREE doesn't validate your delusions. Millions are whoring out an online presence on social media, and not paying a fucking dime for it. If anything, it's far cheaper for the world to obtain and maintain an
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:2)
Previously, Obama-era price freeze on .com domain names regulated prices, now, as noted in /. summary, the price will be under NEW regulations, specifically:
- maximum 7% annual price increase
- price can only increase 4 out of 6 years
- customers must be able to lock-in current pricing for up to 10 years
Did you even get past the part where they mentioned repealing Obama-era price controls?
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I own a few domains for family/personal use, e.g. [mylastname].net, which I’ve set up for e-mail for members of my extended family (we have an uncommon last name) and [myusualscreenname].com, which I use for odds and ends like image hosting, website dabbling, signing up with spam addresses, etc.. Absorbing price increases like these may be trivial to businesses, but I have a wife and kid who along with me live solely off my income. As such, we literally have a line item in our personal budget to set a
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:1)
Here's my story just to grind it in what a useless piece of shit you are:
I've made it quite clear in previous posts that i started with nothing, I starved my way through college with a full time job and no money from parents or loans or government etc, I worked my ass off for years, I am now a reasonably wealthy 1%er. I earned every penny of it. I've paid more taxes in the last 5 years
Re: Much ado about nothing? (Score:1)
You know how the rich stay rich? They don't spend money they don't have on stupid shit.
Your suspicions about my feelings regardi
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Yeah...despite you thinking otherwise about me, we only spend money we have. The only debt I have ever had in my life is my mortgage. I never took out a student loan because I worked to put myself all the way through grad school. I never took out car loans because I scrimped and saved to buy our cars outright. I did take out a mortgage, but after only six years in the house our equity is already close to 50%. I pay off my credit cards in full every month and always have. At a quick glance, it looks like I'm
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Tell your wife to get a job.
She has a job: full-time mother to our kid(s). It's the job she wants and a job I am happy I can quite easily support.
Don't have kids.
Too late. Besides which, I'm able to support them just fine and don't have trouble making ends meet, despite your incorrect (though admittedly reasonable, based on what I said) assumption that we're poor.
Get a better job.
I have a better job. I'll concede that it pays less than other offers I had on the table at the time I accepted it (as well as others I've seen since), but the quality of life is so much hig
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If you must know, I already have a second job, much to my chagrin. I've gladly volunteered my time doing this same, part-time work for other non-profits ever since I was 10 years old, but the non-profit I'm with right now insisted on bringing me on as paid staff, so I make a few extra bucks each month, despite my protestations. Given my progress at training up and delegating my work to a team of volunteers, however, I'm tentatively hopeful I can get off their payroll in the next few months.
*fingers crossed*
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It doesn't make or break the budget, no. In looking back over what I said, did make it sound that way and I apologize for that, since that's not a fair depiction of the state of our budget. I do have line items for all of our recurring costs that we know in advance, so I do track how much we spend on individual things like that, but I made it sound like we need to be doing that lest we go belly-up, which simply isn't the case. I do it because it helps us to make sure we don't let those sorts of expenses pil
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but probably needs to be some sort of arrangement where the cost is tied to inflation.
Cost should reduce with time. It should follow the moore law. Managing this gets cheaper and cheaper as hardware gets better and cheaper too.
If we really DO need, to avoid abuse, to raise prices, then the money should go to a non profit, the UN, or whatever but definitely not in a corporation's bank account.
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When you consider the real costs of running any kind of web site worth visiting, the cost for domain registration is pretty minimal.
Unclear why this would even be relevant to domain pricing.
As long as the system requires one central body to manage it at the top level, the pricing does require regulation. I don't think Obama's "price freeze" was realistic to keep in place indefinitely -- but probably needs to be some sort of arrangement where the cost is tied to inflation.
Would also consider there are more .com domains today which should improve unit cost due to economies of scale while costs associated with bandwidth and processing continue to fall.
VeriSign operates only two root servers and it's not like they are directly supporting domain holders.
This whole scheme of granting monopolies to TLDs is completely unjustifiable and must end. ICANN itself is in dire need of being massively reformed or replaced entirely.
Public announcement !- public process (Score:5, Insightful)
Making the deal "behind closed doors" and then publicly announcing it does not make it a public process with public input, no matter how many years have elapsed since the public announcment.
It's as if the "anonymous reader" has never heard of a fait accompli [wiktionary.org].
Re: Public announcement !- public process (Score:2)
It's been public for two years before implementation - that's pretty reasonable IMHO.
If the increase offends you, get a 10 year renewal for less than $100, and then in 10 years you can carp about the Fee 'syrocketing' to $11/yr instead of $7.85/yr
How about $50/domain/year? (Score:2)
Is there nobody left who remembers the InterNIC? Domains used to be free, but you needed to request them from the InterNIC and submit who, what, and why details to justify them. The namespace was well managed because how could a squatter justify "all of the three letter .com domains" in their request?
When the net was made "commercial", Network Solutions (now part of Verisign) was given the exclusive contract to run all that and started slapping everyone with a $50/year fee for each domain. Went on
Domain squatters? (Score:3)
What mystifies me are the domain squatters. Pick any short domain, or any domain that's actually a word or a name - if it's not pointing to a site, then it's owned by some squatter. This applies to nearly all of the original TLDs, as well as a lot of national domains. Go ahead, try it: have your cat step on your keyboard, add ".com" and see what comes up.
How does this make any financial sense? The squatters must be sitting on 10s of thousands, 100s of thousands, maybe millions of random domains. Yet I don't know anyone who has ever bought a domain from a squatter.
If they are really paying annual registration fees, this cannot make financial sense. Do squatters get some sort of quantity discount?
Re:Domain squatters? (Score:5, Interesting)
I once had an attorney for a business matter that quit being a lawyer after our case was over and got into 'domaining'. Albeit this was back in the early 2000's but in order for squatting to be more profitable than charging $300 an hour it has to be pretty fscking lucrative and I kind of wish I jumped on the bandwagon back then.
Although back then, 'domaining' involved buying typos like gogle and goole and then putting a search bar on it and showing ads. People were making 6 figures a month doing this sort of garbage.
Another aspect of it was buying up expiring domains (back before auto-renew) and then charging 100x the market rate back to the original owner to buy it back. My business partner talked me into buying a domain that expired from an ex-customer and selling it back to him. I couldn't do it. I transferred it back to the guy at what it cost me to register it.
Isn't it always disheartening that the sociopaths and narcissists tend to get rich more easily than the hard working?
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Alt roots (Score:1)
Can we start configuring our favorite distros and router firmwares with alternative root nameservers by default? Between Namecoin and OpenNIC I feel that we small time players and enthusiasts could have our needs met.
WTF? Is somebody desperate to get rich here? (Score:2)
First the .org shenanigans and now .com. I think somebody needs to lose their job urgently.
The Real Problem (Score:3)
I have a .com domain. It is pre-paid for the next 10 years. I do not give a flying fuck if someone decides to change the price, it ain't my problem (read the contract, fucktard).
On the other hand, the way to "fix" the scam-domain registration problem is to INCREASE the initial registration price to $1,000.00 for one year only, and to NOT process the registration until the payment irreversibly clears. Wanna register 1,000 spammer domains? Fine. After your payment for $1,000,000.00 clears and cannot be reversed I will be happy to register your domain name.
All problems solved. Simple, straight-forward, and no muss, fuss, or bother.
the real issue ignored (Score:1)