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

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Renewal increase
by Ivan April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Dear Sir or Madam I understand that you plan to increase the cost of hosting. Many people are pensioners who host a web page as a hobby and not for profit. It does not cost much for you to provide this service, so please do not increase the prices as I and many other will not be able to afford it. Best regards Ivan Coppins

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Keep the price cap
by Michael Toth April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Keep the price cap on .info gTLD. All gTLDs should have a reasonable price cap.

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Strongly in favor of price caps in the renewal agreement
by matthewlewisnewton＠gmail.com April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Hello ICANN, my name is Matt Newton and I am a software engineer who works on the web. I am strongly opposed to uncapped prices for TLD registrars, who can use this monopoly power to enrich themselves at the expense of small players on the web. I believe this proposal will exacerbate the centralization of the web by pricing out small companies from getting hosting independent of centralized platforms like Facebook. It is contrary to the mission of an open web for all and serves only to enrich a few TLD registrar middlemen beyond their operating costs.

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Stop the .info price increase and URS!
by Konstantinos Zournas April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

I am a .info registrant and I strongly oppose uncapped price increases in .org domains and the introduction of URS. Shame on you ICANN for even suggesting a comment period for such despicable changes to the legacy extensions: .org (PIR), .biz (Neustar), .info (Afilias) and .asia (DotAsia Organisation Ltd. and Afilias). How does ICANN justifies these huge price increases on domain names that cost less than $1 to maintain and operate? Shame and disgust on the privileged registries that have made millions over the past few years from us all. Us all the domain name registrants that come from all over the world. "Legacy" TLDs, such as .org .net .com .biz .info and .asia, have absolutely nothing in common with all new gTLDs. Legacy extensions were created 15 to 30 years before the new gtlds and are essentially a monopoly on the internet. All 1000+ new gtlds represent less than 5% of all domains. The 10+ legacy tlds have the other 95% of the market share. PIR, Afilias, Neustar and Neustar did not create these extensions as it happened with the New gTLDs and they certainly did not or currently have any competition. New gTLDs companies paid millions in auctions to get the rights of these extensions. What would happen if the legacy TLDs were put up for auction with today’s capped price increases? Other companies would pay millions to have the privilege of being one of the respective extension operator. Popular New gtld extensions were auctioned of for millions while the legacy extensions were simply awarded to be operated by the respective registries. Verisign paid $135 million for the rights of .web domains. How much do you think the .com registry would be auctioned today? Even if .com prices were set at $3 or $5 the high bidder registry would probably end up paying billions. These legacy extensions were NOT created by PIR, Afilias, Neustar or Verisign. The extensions existed before these companies and will exist after these companies. These are not their extensions. They are our extensions. And by our I am talking about the registrants around the world. And some people in the US this they own the extensions. They don’t. The legacy extensions belong to the whole world. ICANN should stop catering to the big registries and pay more attention to protect the owners of .info domain names. The registries have made billions of dollars over the past 20 years. The registries are already operating a ridiculously high profit margin (65%-70% or even higher) that are not met in any other industry. The Verisign .com monopoly reported last week a huge operating margin that was 65.4 percent for the first quarter of 2019. Instead of being grateful for this gift that it is being given all the legacy registries are asking for domain name price increases. It is time that all legacy contracts are put up for grabs for a more competitive prices. The .com extension can be operated for maybe $2 or $3 per domain and companies would pay millions to have the privilege to operate the extension at this level. Same with .info domains. Companies would easily pay a couple of billion to operate the .com at $5 per domain for the next 6 years. Or they could easily pay 500 million to operate the .com registry at $3 per domain for the next 6 years. Yet ICANN strangely allows this Verisign, Afilias, PIR and Neustar greed and arrogance. It makes you think what "organization" ICANN has become over the past few years... Instead of price increases with should be having price decreases on all legacy extensions including .info domains. New domain extensions charge any price they want and they have been a disaster so far. Registries are suddenly increasing registration and renewal fees of up to 3,000%!!!! Lots of people are complaining because of this and this has already been very bad for the domain name industry’s reputation. .info has the right to raise prices 10% every year that already too much and well above the current inflation. Allowing huge price increases from one year to the next could ruin .info for everybody. The .info registry or any other legacy extension operator must not be allowed to raise prices are they wish. These domain names belong to the whole world and not just these 4-5 registry companies. They are only paid to be the administrative operator and nothing more. And the current price is well above what the current price for a new gtld backend is. New gtlds backend registries are charging $1 per domain or less. These are companies like Afilias, PIR and Neustar that are now getting paid $10+ from us the world domain name registrants and yet they want a lot more. And ICANN is surprisingly willing to give them whatever they want instead of doing their job that is to protect the registrants. Increasing .info and other legacy tld prices will be a disaster. What happens if prices go to $100 per domain or $1,000 per domain? This is about the whole effect this will have on the global. How is such a huge price increase justified? An increase of all legacy domains (lets say about 200 million of legacy domains) from $10 to $100 per year would mean that an extra 180 BILLION dollars will go to just 4 companies over the next 10 years. 4 US companies. How is this justified? All these domain name registrants now pay about 20 billion over 10 years. They will have to pay 200 BILLION dollars at $100!!! Or 2 trillion dollars at $1,000 per domain! Greece's gross domestic product is about 200 billion per year. We would love to take over these extensions and run a few servers around the world. This is free money. Companies have already paid for the rights of these .org, .info or .com domains. Any price increase would effectively mean that Afilias, Verisign or PIR would cease our domains and make us pay rent on them. This is domain name confiscation!!! Before you know it your company or personal .info domain will cost $200 or $3,000 per year or $10,000 per year depending on what Afilias decides that you have to pay them depending on the domain name. They will essentially confiscate your domains (that you either bought years ago or even paid thousands or millions to purchase) and make you pay them rent on them. At this point new gtld prices are held down because of the capped legacy TLDs prices. If legacy domain prices get to $200 per domain per year then all domains will cost $200 or more. Or $1,000 or more. There is little competition in all domain names as Verisign, PIR, Afilias and Neustar are basically monopolies. They have a 95% market share. It only takes these 4 companies and soon all domain names could cost $200 or $500 or more. *Practically these large companies are attempting to steal all our land and homes and rent them back to us. Domain names are our land and homes on the internet. This attempt is only possible with the help of ICANN and their executives that hide behind a non-profit organization while making millions in salaries and while NOT protecting the domain name registrants.* We are now paying an administrative fee to these companies. An administrative is pretty much set in competitive world. New gtlds are paying $1 or less per domain. But there is no competition in these registries. They are essentially monopolies that will be able to charge us whatever they want if ICANN allows them to have no price caps. Anything above $2 or $3 per year is already too expensive for the backend registries that Verisign, PIR, Afilias and Neustar truly are. *.info domains don’t need the URS. There have been a lot of bad decisions under the UDRP from the unregulated UDRP providers. The URS is even worse.* Konstantinos Zournas OnlineDomain.com

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Statement in opposition to .info domain changes
by Al Mithani April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Hello, I am against having .info domains follow the same rules as the new TLDs, including allowing the registry to set prices arbitrarily. The .info TLD is now part of the fabric of the internet, and it should have a separate set of rules from the new TLDs. The registry for the .info domain is a steward of a public resource, and should not profit off of the value of the .info TLD which was created by the public. If the registry wants to arbitrarily set prices, it should create a new TLD - not take advantage of the history of the .info domain name. -Al Mithani

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC Comments re: Proposed Renewal of .info Registry Agreement
by Brian Scarpelli April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

On behalf of the Intellectual Property Constituency, I am submitting comments on the proposed renewal of the .info registry agreement. Best regards, Brian Scarpelli Senior Global Policy Counsel +1 517-507-1446<mailto:+1%20517-507-1446> | bscarpelli(a)actonline.org<mailto:bscarpelli@actonline.org> ACT | The App Association 1401 K St NW (Ste 501) Washington, DC 20005

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] ICANN should retain price caps, at least on renewals
by Andrew Allemann April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

For the reasons stated below, ICANN must reconsider its proposal to remove price caps on .info domain names, especially for renewals Market power at the time of registration It is technically true that there are a lot of choices when it comes to choosing a domain name. If I want to register example.com, I can choose to register a longer .com, opt for a .net or .info domain, a ccTLD or choose from hundreds of new top level domains such as example .xyz. But let’s face it, people usually want .com. It has extraordinary market power. Back in 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division explained <https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/baker-to-dengate-thrush-18dec08…>(pdf) this in a letter to ICANN regarding new top level domain names. It stated: “Our investigation of the proposed .com agreement generated several findings that bear on the likely effect of creating new gTLDs. First, we found that VeriSign possesses significant market power as the operator of the .com registry because many registrants do not perceive .com and other gTLDs (such as .biz and .info) and country code TLDs (“ccTLDS,” such as .uk and .de) to be substitutes… …We also concluded that existing gTLDS would not become a competitive threat to .com registrations because the network effects that make .com registrations so valuable to consumers will be difficult for other TLDs to overcome. Due to a first-mover advantage and high brand awareness, .com registrations account for the overwhelming majority of gTLD registrations… Even with the introduction of hundreds of new top level domains since this letter was written, they have barely chipped away at .com’s market power. Do other TLDs have market power? I’d argue .org does. Charities and non-profits often think of .org first instead of .com. The antitrust department noted: “Finally, our investigation of the .com agreement found evidence that other gTLD registry operators may possess a degree of market power. The market power inherent in other gTLDs is less than the market power in .com, but is still material.” In order of power in the gTLD market, I’d argue that .com is highest and .org is second highest. ccTLDs also have market power in some countries. The presence of market power for initial registrations suggests that prices for some top level domains should be restricted. A non-profit is unlikely to choose .charity over .org unless it is unable to acquire the .org domain. It will usually choose an alternate, longer .org domain before choosing something else. This might not be true in twenty years but it is true in 2019. For top level domains that don’t have market power and are easy substitutes for each other, controlling initial registration prices is not as important. That’s part of the reason people are complaining more about .org price caps than .info. High switching costs and market power at the time of renewal Domain names have immense switching costs. Companies that switch from one domain name to another often spend months planning the move. Some spend years. Some spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are two reasons the switching costs are high. First is search engines. Google is the lifeblood of many website’s traffic. Even the best-planned domain name transition can have serious traffic (and thus monetary) impacts. When HomeAdvisor switched its domain from ServiceMagic.com it saw a marked drop in traffic and revenue. On its conference call after switching domains, the company stated <https://domainnamewire.com/2013/05/09/homeadvisor-domain-change/>: HomeAdvisor domestic revenue was negatively impacted by a 20% decrease in accepted service requests due primarily to the domain name change. 20% from a domain name change! It took the company a while to regain the search rankings it had before. Even companies that create and manage websites for a living have to expend significant resources <https://domainnamewire.com/2015/12/04/how-a-creative-agency-switched-from-c…> to change domain names. It can be done but it’s very difficult. The second reason for high switching costs is email. Companies often have thousands of email addresses tied to their domain name. These email addresses are then tied to many online accounts. Switching domain names means updating all the mailboxes technically and all the accounts associated with them. It means emailing all customers and telling them about the new addresses. It undoubtedly means missing some important emails when the switch happens. I have an acquaintance who was offered over $200,000 for a domain name he registered in 1997. He declined because he and his family have email addresses tied to the domain. It would mean changing hundreds of account registrations at websites and countless hours of work. It’s one thing to switch email addresses if the company retains its prior domain name and can forward email to the new one. But if a company has to relinquish an old domain name due to renewal costs, it will miss out on this email forwarding and probably miss important messages. These high switching costs make domain owners hostages to the registries that operate their domains. They simply have to pay whatever they are charged. The cost to switch is too much. For this reason, renewal costs *must* be capped. How domain registration and renewal costs should be managed Some top level domains have market power at the time of registration. All top level domains have tremendous power over registrants at the time of renewal. For this reason, ICANN should consider capping initial registry fees for top level domains that have some level of market power, such as .com and .org. It should limit prices on *all* domains at the time of renewal. The organization has stated that registrants have some protection because they can renew domains for up to ten years at current prices before price hikes take effect. There are two problems with this. First, the registries must notify the registrars of the price increase. It’s up to the registrars to notify customers. Busy customers might overlook these notices or not have the cash to renew for ten years today. Second, and most importantly, this just kicks the can down the road. What does a company do ten years from now when it has to pay the new rates.

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Business Constituency (BC) comment on Proposed Renewal of Registry Agreement for .INFO
by Steve DelBianco April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Attached is the comment of ICANN’s Business Constituency (BC), regarding the Proposed Renewal of Registry Agreements for .INFO and .ORG This comment was drafted by Steve DelBianco, Mark Datysgeld, and Andrew Mack. It was approved in accord with our Charter. -- Steve DelBianco Vice Chair for Policy Coordination ICANN Business Constituency (BC)

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Price Increase Proposal
by ANDREW HESCH April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

Dear Sir or Madam, I am a small business person with an .info website address. Pease accept this feedback that I am against the unlimited pricing increases that are proposed. I simply cannot afford to pay for more than the current capped pricing structure. Please continue pricing as it currently is and do not lift the current caps on increases. Thank you, Andy Hesch Owner Hesch Insurance Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10

1 0

[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] NO to the proposed removal of caps on legacy TLDs
by Michael Neuffer April 29, 2019

April 29, 2019

The proposed removal of the caps on the gTLDs (biz/info/org) would only drive up prices for all users and line the pockets of ICANN and the owners of the privatized registries while ignoring the long history of those TLDs. The gTLDs are are common resource the current registries are just their stewards. So this is a resounding NO to this proposal. Instead the new TLDs should receive a cap as well once they reach a certain size. Kind regards Michael Neuffer

1 0