Hello All:

ICANN staff continues to make progress toward a final DAG, and their continued efforts should acknowledged. There is a lot to digest in this latest DAG, however, one thing did jump out at me that I wanted to raise with the broader constituency.

Under the current unsponsored registry agreements, registries are required to provide registrants six months notice prior to raising price. This six month notice/safeguard was first proposed in connection the .COM registry agreement.

It appears that DAG 3.0 is proposing to change this requirement to 30 days notice in connection with “new” registrations and 180 days notice for “existing” registrations.  (See full text below)

The explanatory memorandum to the DAG states “This provision was modified to shorten the notification period for price increases related to initial registrations as suggested by community comments.”  There are two questions which I think we need to raise with staff. First, can ICANN staff point to the community comments that they reference in connection with initial/new registrations. I was not aware of these comments and could not find any reference to them after conducting a quick search this morning. However, given the sheer volume of public comments it is possible that I missed this comment(s). Does anyone else recall this proposed change; George this is an issue which you always closely.

Second, can anyone point to the basis for staff’s proposed change in connection with existing registration pricing. Given that this safeguard was a hot topic in connection with the .COM registry agreement, I think it would benefit the community to have a broader discussion on this topic, and to understand the underlying basis of ICANN Staff recommendation.  Is this something that the broader membership agrees with?  

Best regards,

Michael D. Palage

2.10 Pricing for Registry Services. Except as set forth in this Section 2.10, Registry

Operator shall provide each ICANN accredited registrar that has executed Registry Operator’s registry registrar

agreement advance notice of any price increase [(net of refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying

or other programs)] of no less than thirty (30) calendar days with respect to initial domain name

registrations and one hundred eighty (180) calendar days with respect to renewal of domain name

registrations, and shall offer registrars the option to obtain domain name registration renewals at the

current price (i.e. the price in place prior to any noticed increase) for periods of one to ten years at the

discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years. Notwithstanding the foregoing, with respect to

renewal of domain name registrations, Registry Operator need only provide thirty (30) calendar days

notice of any price increase if the resulting price is less than or equal to a price for which Registry

Operator provided notice within that past twelve (12) months, and need not provide any notice of any

price increase for the imposition of the Variable Registry-Level Fee set forth in Section 6.3. [Registry
Operator shall offer all domain registration renewals at the same price, unless the registrant agrees to a

higher price at the time of the initial registration of the domain name following clear and conspicuous

disclosure of such renewal price by Registry Operator.] Registry Operator shall provide public querybased

DNS lookup service for the TLD at its sole expense.