- comments-info-renewal-18mar19@icann.org

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Objection to removal of .info price cap
by Benjamin Esham April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Hello, I am writing with regard to the terms of the proposed renewal of the .info registry agreement; specifically, with the removal of the price cap provisions in the current version of the agreement. As the owner of a .info domain, this provision protects me from arbitrary, capricious, and unearned increases in the price of my domain registration. New registrants of .info domains should get the same protection. The removal of the price cap would enrich wholesale registries while providing no benefit to—and, indeed, hurting—everyone else. Please do not adopt any agreement that removes the price cap. Thank you, Benjamin Esham

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .info Registry Agreement
by SP April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Dear Sirs, I am a domain name registrant. Legacy gTLDs are fundamentally different from for-profit new gTLDs and should be treated that way. Legacy TLDs are what the internet was built on. They are essentially a public trust. They are very different than new gTLDs which were created, bought and paid for by private parties. Registrants of these legacy extensions should be entitled to price predictability & stability. Advancements in technology should be driving the cost of operating a registry down, yet prices keep going up? Removing price caps is unfair to the millions of domain registrants. They will have no price protections. Every registrant will be at the complete mercy and whims of the registry. This could result in a transfer of funds from millions of non-profits to one non-profit, with no benefits to the domain registrants. ICANN is supposed to represent a "bottom up, consensus-driven multistakeholder model". ICANN should not unilaterally impose URS in legacy TLDs when that issue is precisely what is being examined by the volunteer ICANN Working Group who has been mandated to review this issue. ICANN should be looking out for the .info registrants, in particular the non-profits. There is no "public benefit" justification to these changes. It is just a handout to business at the expense of registrants’ rights and protections. Where are the protections for the millions of domain registrants that this could effect in a negative way? These changes would give way too much power to the registry. This is not acceptable for a "public benefit" organization that exists to represent many stakeholders. -- Regards, SP

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Price cap removal an abdication of responsibility
by Kevin Ohashi April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Removing the price cap on legacy gTLDs is an act of regulatory capture, plain and simple. These are non-competitive, monopoly contracts providing internet services with diminishing costs at scale and for years ICANN has allowed them to raise their prices on consumers. The fixed increases were bad enough, but uncapping it and saying the market will decide is dangerous and irresponsible. Do your job properly and keep price cap provisions in the contract. Kevin Ohashi

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Comment on updated registry agreement with .INFO operator
by Philip Gladstone April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

The big reason for using the legacy TLDs was (and still is) the predictability in future costs of domain registration and renewal. As a registrant in .INFO, I object to any change in the agreements with the registry operator that would allow them to increase prices arbitrarily. I have spent many years building up my website and its associated name and will essentially be held hostage if the .INFO operator increases prices arbitrarily. The amount of revenue to be extracted from .INFO is probably maximized by increasing prices significantly -- even though there would be *no* new registrations. It is a lot easier to multiply prices by a factor of 10, rather than increase the number of domains registered by (more than) a factor of 10. It also isn't obvious to me that this wouldn't allow prices to be increased based on the (say) Alexa rank of the domain name. Maybe just set the price for a top 100 Alex website to $1MM/yr and the operator wouldn't lose many of those customers. Also, it isn't clear *why* ICANN is proposing this change -- it feels like a giveaway to the existing operators who did *nothing* to create the value of the TLD, but just operated the TLD on behalf of ICANN (and the legacy TLDs predate ICANN itself). This is different from the new gTLDs where the applicant is creating the value for themselves. How much *value* does ICANN think is being transferred to the INFO operator though this change, and how much did the .INFO operator have to give to ICANN (or its staff) to get this reward? Philip Gladstone

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Comment re: .info price cap lift
by Samuel Reed April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

The Internet is a public resource and it is ICANN's responsibility to be the caretakers for it, not to extract maximum profit from it. The proposed cap lift on .info, .org, and .biz is the beginning of the end for the democratization of the Internet and DNS as a whole. When we all got on the Internet, we thought we had truly discovered something different, something democratic, by the people for the people. Please don't prove a whole generation wrong for dollars.

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Comment re .INFO registry renewal from John Poole, DomainMondo.com
by John Poole April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Comment re .INFO registry renewal from John Poole, DomainMondo.com is attached (pdf).

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] NO DOMAIN PRICE INCREASES
by Strategic Investment Management Ltd. Corporate April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019 To ICANN and the .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ registries (and to all other registries): CEASE AND DESIST NOTICE Any regulation, rule or law which allows anyone (including ICANN, and / or any registry) to raise the price of any domain above the initial price paid for the domain is fraudulent and should be understood as illegal. It is an uncompetitive business practice, and amounts to the operation of a monopoly, and US anti-trust laws and civil and criminal procedure should prohibit and such action. Neither I, nor the company I founded, have ever agreed to any price increase over the original price paid to register a domain. The fact that a domain must be renewed does not imply our acceptance of the legality of an increased price, but rather your fraudulent and unfair business practices and monopoly practices. We have had to keep renewing our domains or lose them, so we have had no alternative but to renew them for higher prices and expect to be refunded every penny paid over the original purchase price once a competent and fair and just court understands and decides in this continuing matter. No one goes into business in a competitive market unless they can understand their costs; To allow a registry to increase costs over the originally agreed-to price (which is an agreement to pay a specific price every year for the infinite future) is already a very serious financial commitment. We business-people will not allow a for-profit (or any type of) registry to continue raising the annual price of such a business asset. That would be agreeing to fraudulent theft from one's own business - nothing any American or other nations' citizen should ever agree to. It is, in fact, shameful that this is happening at all, and ICANN has the shame for being "in bed" with the registries in this matter, rather than representing the real backbone of the Internet- the millions of domain name owners (that you still call Registrants) who have paid for domain names, web hosting services, website construction and web app construction services, web advertising and web marketing, etc. These are the drivers of the economy and the Internet, not the cash cow monopolistic registries. We expect a competent court to recognize a real ownership interest in a domain name by the registrant, as common law already has, and this means that the price paid to register a domain name is the price that must be paid annually for as long as the domain owner/registrant wishes to keep the domain name. It's as simple as that. Please stop this theft, this fraud and these unfair and uncompetitive business practices in allowing registries to change prices for domains already registered, and start the massive refund process for every price increase over the $6 original fee for a year of domain name ownership. Furthermore, to ICANN, stop taxing us $0.18 per year of domain name ownership. That is taxation without representation – something that is not allowed in the United States of America. Sincerely, Matt Hooker Chairman Strategic Investment Management Ltd. Corporate(a)S-I-M.biz

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] NO DOMAIN PRICE INCREASES
by IDOA - Internet Domain Owners Association April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019 To ICANN and the .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ registries (and to all other registries): CEASE AND DESIST NOTICE Any regulation, rule or law which allows anyone (including ICANN, and / or any registry) to raise the price of any domain above the initial price paid for the domain is fraudulent and should be understood as illegal. It is an uncompetitive and unfair business practice, and amounts to the operation of a monopoly, and US anti-trust laws and civil and criminal procedure should prohibit and such action. Neither I, nor the company I founded, have ever agreed to any price increase over the original price paid to register a domain. The fact that a domain must be renewed does not imply our acceptance of the legality of an increased price, but rather your fraudulent and unfair business practices and monopoly practices. We have had to keep renewing our domains or lose them, so we have had no alternative but to renew them for higher prices and expect to be refunded every penny paid over the original purchase price once a competent and fair and just court understands and decides in this continuing matter. No one goes into business in a competitive market unless they can understand their costs; To allow a registry to increase costs over the originally agreed-to price (which is an agreement to pay a specific price every year for the infinite future) is already a very serious financial commitment. We business-people will not allow a for-profit (or any type of) registry to continue raising the annual price of such a business asset. That would be agreeing to fraudulent theft from one's own business - nothing any American or other nations' citizen should ever agree to. It is, in fact, shameful that this is happening at all, and ICANN has the shame for being "in bed" with the registries in this matter, rather than representing the real backbone of the Internet- the millions of domain name owners (that you still call Registrants) who have paid for domain names, web hosting services, website construction and web app construction services, web advertising and web marketing, etc. These are the drivers of the economy and the Internet, not the cash cow monopolistic registries. We expect a competent court to recognize a real ownership interest in a domain name by the registrant, as common law already has, and this means that the price paid to register a domain name is the price that must be paid annually for as long as the domain owner/registrant wishes to keep the domain name. It's as simple as that. Please stop this theft, this fraud and these unfair and uncompetitive business practices in allowing registries to change prices for domains already registered, and start the massive refund process for every price increase over the $6 original fee for a year of domain name ownership. Sincerely, Matt Hooker Founder IDOA Internet Domain Owners Association Info(a)IDOA.info Contact(a)IDOA.info -- IDOA.info the Internet Domain Owners Association info(a)IDOA.info

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Increased risk of price gauging if price caps are removed
by Paul van den Burg April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

I'm very concerned about this proposal to remove the price caps on the .org and .info TLDs. Competition to keep prices low and fair only works if there are actual competitors. However by design there is only one vendor for each TLD which prevents any competition. Competition from other TLDs is barely existing. As an domain is of great value for a company as well as consumers and can't be easily replaced by a domain with a different TLD. Which makes the current domain owners very vulnerable for price gauging from the practical monopoly the current TLD vendors have. Such monopolies can only work if there is a strict regulation of the market, for which the current price caps seem to suffice fine. Additionally there seems to be no benefit for removing the price caps. The only people to possibly benefit are the current owners of the TLD while hurting all current owners of a domain. It is definitely not going to reduce prices, because they were free to do so already. -Paul van den Burg

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[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Registration Renewal
by Stephen Scott April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

To whom it may concern, I am writing to ask that you maintain the current methodology for price increases on domain registration. Removing the limit increase would create much higher costs and would limit individual's accessibility to registering. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Stephen Scott

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