April 2019 - comments-org-renewal-18mar19@icann.org

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Ivan Delsinne April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

I am a .org registrant (non-profit). 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 .org 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, - Ivan

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Jamie Zawinski April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

I am a .org registrant (not-for-profit). I've read about a lot of bad decisions under the UDRP. The URS seems even worse. I heard the URS is very new and is being reviewed now to see if it is working properly. It is too soon to include an untested policy on .org domains where for a few hundred dollars anyone could try to shut down someone else's website. Telling the .org registry that it can charge any price it wants for renewing a domain name is a terrible idea. Why would you allow them to set a crazy high price? They could try to force the domain owners to pay a very high price each year to renew their domain name, and if the domain owner either won't or can't, then the .org registry could take away their domain name, set a high registration price on it, and then try to find someone else who is willing to pay a high price for it. This is very unfair to long time .org domain owners who may see their prices raised sky high for no reason. You let the new domain extensions charge any price they want, but that hasn't gone so well. Lots of people got burned when the new registries offered low rates for the first year, and then after people registered the domain names and some built web sites on them, some of the prices were raised through the roof. .Org has been working just fine for decades where the prices maybe go up a little bit each year. Allowing huge price increases from one year to the next could ruin .org for everybody. I think you should pay a little more attention to what is good for the owners of .org domain names. The registries are doing fine. They don't need your help as they are already making plenty of money. -- Jamie Zawinski https://www.jwz.org/

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Oppose the removal of price cap for legacy .org domain
by Hoang Nguyen April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

I write to oppose the removal of price cap as it directly affect me and my community. I have an .org domain that is used for emails when contributing to the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). The email is the most important piece of information to verify my identity. Therefore, I must keep the ownership of the domain. Removing the price cap could potentially jack up the renewal fees to who knows how much. It makes it so easy to attack and undermine the FLOSS community and other communities that use only email as identity. Attackers, who want to impersonate core members of FLOSS projects, now have high chance of acquire the domain as the new fee is no longer affordable by individuals whose hobby is FLOSS. This new policy will break the assumption that email is unique and own by one human. Therefore, it undermines the current security model and the effort to introduce a new identity system is huge. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Please don't raise .org Registry fees
by abby zavos April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

Hello, I have a registered .org account. There are so many extensions available now, and so few ways for businesses to establish credibility. The .org extension is used by charitable organizations and non-profits at all levels. Smaller organizations rely on these sites to conduct business and would be crippled by the removal of the current price caps. ICANN should not be raising these prices. Please don't allow this domain to become a place where bidding wars are more important than long-term relationships with organizations who perform good work. Help build communities, not profits. ~Abby Zavos

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Please do not increase the pricing by more than 10%
by Joseph Bergida April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

To whom it may concern, ".org" pricing is fairly priced right now. Removing a cap on pricing in effect makes the internet less accessible to all and contributes to a de-democratization of the web. Please keep the marketplace open and don’t contribute to it becoming a smaller circle of those who can participate. Thanks. Joseph

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Shay Giner April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

I am a .org registrant. I've read about a lot of bad decisions under the UDRP. The URS seems even worse. I heard the URS is very new and is being reviewed now to see if it is working properly. It is too soon to include an untested policy on .org domains where for a few hundred dollars anyone could try to shut down someone else's website. Telling the .org registry that it can charge any price it wants for renewing a domain name is a terrible idea. Why would you allow them to set a crazy high price? They could try to force the domain owners to pay a very high price each year to renew their domain name, and if the domain owner either won't or can't, then the .org registry could take away their domain name, set a high registration price on it, and then try to find someone else who is willing to pay a high price for it. This is very unfair to long time .org domain owners who may see their prices raised sky high for no reason. You let the new domain extensions charge any price they want, but that hasn't gone so well. Lots of people got burned when the new registries offered low rates for the first year, and then after people registered the domain names and some built web sites on them, some of the prices were raised through the roof. .Org has been working just fine for decades where the prices maybe go up a little bit each year. Allowing huge price increases from one year to the%

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Ryan Pugatch April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

I am a .org registrant. ICANN does not seem to recognize the difference between a legacy extension created with the support of the US government, that predates the existence of ICANN and that has millions of existing users and the brand new extensions that started off with a new set of rules, in particular no price controls, and no existing registrants. They have completely different characteristics, history, and ownership structure. It is not acceptable for ICANN to ignore these differences and to propose that they be treated the same. Removing price caps is not fair to .org domain owners. Many of them have websites that they have used for years. If price caps are removed, the cost to renew their domain names may become too expensive, and they could be forced to give up websites that are important to them. ICANN should be doing more to protect owners of .org domain names. Why is ICANN trying to remove price protections for .org domain owners, so many of which are non-profits, so that they can be overcharged for their domain names? Given that a domain registry is a monopoly for a specific TLD, the governing authority, ICANN, should prevent the registries in check with the amount they are able to increase registration fees. Since a domain is the identity of an organization, it is unreasonable to expect that an organization would be able to simply change domains to another TLD with another registry in the event of an increase.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Don't Let PIR Set Whatever Price They Want!
by Palencia, Carlos April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

Please do not let PIR set whatever price they want! This is going to affect my current and future website development projects.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Comment
by Seth Kearney-Caldwell April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

I am writing to oppose the proposed ability of ICANN to increase the costs of .org TLDs. With no cap on the costs of these domains, organizations everywhere will be forced to pay constantly higher prices every year, something that will undoubtedly create additional struggles for our already bootstrapped NGOs, non-profits, institutions and other groups that serve our society. I ask you to consider the greater impact on our world and keep the cap in place. Please reject this proposal and move forward without affecting millions of current registrants who expect their domain expenses to remain affordable and stable. -- Seth Caldwell User Experience Design sc(a)sethcaldwell.com | sethcaldwell.com <https://mailtrack.io/trace/link/6a6cfc7847b157e1b8d562f5fd40ffea110d5fac?ur…>

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Domain prices must stay stable
by Erica Friedman April 25, 2019

April 25, 2019

Small businesses of all kinds rely on the Internet to transact businesses. Rapidly rising prices will stifle their ability to conduct business. Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10

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