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

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Good morning.
by Timotej Leginus April 23, 2019

April 23, 2019

I wholeheartedly agree with you, this should be taken in place.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] .org comments
by HOSTMASTER WEB April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

The WHOIS PRIVACY Group, a pseudo-gTLD operator .lgbtr.com dedicated to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Resource community, publicly expresses its comments on ICANN's ".ORG" proposals. It is well known to every Internet community that the original 7 gTLDs, created by Postel in the 1980s, are of great importance to the DNS system and to Internet governance. It is also a notary public that ICANN has been adopting unpopular measures without a broader debate with the multisector community and with consumers. It may be noted that the ICANN New gTLD Program has failed and that ".com", ".net" and ".org" domains are of great importance as they are relatively well-known and have regulated prices for the benefit of all. ICANN, by removing the price cap restriction on old gTLDs, will be creating economic turmoil and harming thousands of people and organizations. Old gTLDs, in addition to having community-friendly control, also become alternatives to ccTLDs in dictatorial countries and without press freedom. ICANN has been taking steps to earn more and be able to pay high salaries to its employees and the board, creating excuses to harm the community. www.whoisprivacy.lgbtr.com

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Comment regarding renewal of .org registry agreement
by Michael Ellars April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

Thank you for this opportunity to provide comments on the registry renewal agreement. I have one comment in regards to the "pricing protections" supposedly offered for current registrants. I believe this summary is misleading. The summary of provisions "materially different from the current .org agreement" includes the following statement regarding renewal pricing referenced to Section 2.10: "Protections for existing registrants will remain in place, ..." However, Section 2.10 does not appear to include pricing protections for existing registrants in any meaningful way, at least not in the sense that the phrase "protections for existing registrants" can be reasonably interpreted by a layman. Section 2.10(b) notes, "Registry Operator 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 (1) to ten (10) years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten (10) years." At first blush, this clause appears to grant pricing protection, but it only applies to the prices a registrar (not registrant) pays to the Registry Operator (not registrar). It may be implied that such a price lock would be passed down from the registrar to the registrants, but there is no requirement to do so. (And from a practical standpoint, is there any reason why a registrar would not want to lock in current rates for the maximum ten years allowed? Have rates ever gone down?) In addition, Section 2.10(c) notes, "For the purposes of determining Renewal Pricing, the price for each domain registration renewal must be identical to the price of all other domain name registration renewal in place at the time of such renewal, ..." Thus, the registrar is prohibited from offering current registrants a different renewal price than new registrants. There may be some kind of price guarantee established by Section 2.10(b), but it cannot be used to offer current registrants discounted renewals by Section 2.10(c). Taken together, these two clauses appear to provide *at best* a one-time renewal option for current registrants at current rates, but only if the registrar decides to do so. This hardly seems like "protections for current registrants" and more like specious palliation for current registrants. Pricing protections "at the discretion of the registrar" are not really pricing protections, especially when they are required to be uniformly applied to *all* registrants. Thank you again for this opportunity to provide comments on the registry renewal agreement. Sincerely, Michael Ellars

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] .org Comments
by eCorp April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

22 years ago when we purchased our first purchased a .com, net and .org there was one company with a monopoly on where, how, who can buy these URL's. After several years, ICANN was created along with a registry and registrar structure create competition. When you establish case law, through years of legal expenses and battles, only to rip it out 20 years later, you establish a system is built on SAND. ICANN is now playing with infrastructure build on sand by moving what was established, before ICANN existed. Remember, .com for Commercial, .net for Network, .org for Organizations was the three options. Now that ICANN gets its pockets lined with new TLD's, I think it's time to investigate the whole structure of how, who, etc. runs our infrastructure systems. .Orgs are supposed to be for impact or charity organizations and raising the price with no cap, is and should be borderline criminal. Who benefits from the increase in pricing? Will the service performance increase, NO, will the profits to the company running the TLD increase, YES, will ICANN see more money to spend on 5 star resort gatherings or hire more pawns to accomplish nothing, YES, will the .org owner have to pay more for the same product established from the US Government, NO bid contract, YES. Grouping new TLD structures with the .com,net.org is simply not fair nor should be legal as HISTORY is an important factor when making future direction decisions of our economy. In physical real estate we have grandfathering of old buildings, buildings with historical status for a reason.. URL's should follow the same structure of historic real estate as HISTORY and the people that fight for fairness and honesty get wiped out later on by money hungry, likely criminal activity on the back end that could be happening in this situation. We should investigate the people, process and product on the people making these decisions to determine who really is pocketing and the reasoning behind the decisions.. Giving them an open cart on .org should be illegal, PERIOD. Chad Hunter

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Searchen Networks Inc. April 22, 2019

April 22, 2019

I write to oppose the removal of price caps on any of the “legacy” TLDs as doing so will only create a free-for-all on limitless price increases across the well-established board. The new GTLDs are already accepted as alternative options with price expectations that vary greatly based on the registry; however, current registrants of older well established extensions are expected to maintain some level of stability. These legacy domain names, some of which have been registered for many years, are unlike the new mess being created and owners of these legacy names have a reasonable expectation of affordability and stability. The old manta goes ‘if it is not broken, you do not try and fix it.’ The vast majority of domain owners will remain unaffected so long as the fluctuating and exorbitant prices remain in the newer name space; there will be plenty of years ahead for ICANN to benefit from those while allowing stability within the legacy name space. Leave well enough alone and move forward without effecting millions and millions of current and well established registrants who expect their domain expenses to remain reasonable, affordable and stable. John Colascione Chief Executive Officer Internet Marketing Services Inc. 515 North Flagler Drive, Suite P-300 West Palm Beach, FL 33401 United States of America https://www.internetmarketingservices.com Part of SEARCHEN NETWORKS® 561-370-7366

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] ICANN Fail - ICANN only acting in the narrow interest of contracted registries (does not consider the impact on 10+ million end-user registrants)
by Don Smith April 12, 2019

April 12, 2019

This is a sad day for the DNS industry. ICANN is not giving any consideration to end consumers (registrants.) This is yet another example of how the ICANN multi-stakeholder model does not work. ICANN chooses time and time again to ONLY act in the very narrow interest of contracted registries, including Pubic Interest Registry (PIR), Verisign and others. What is being proposed here is to give PIR the unrestricted ability to increase prices on its base of 10+ million registrants by any amount, with no restrictions whatsoever. PIR will be able to do this without any type of justification. PIR can wake up one morning and decide to arbitrary increase prices by 30%, 300% or even 3000% and this price hike will be fully permitted under the ICANN new proposed .ORG Registry Agreement between ICANN and PIR. So you have a situation where any price increases will be forced upon by 10+ million end-user registrants -- and nobody will be able intervene and make sure consumers are protected. End-users will have no choice - but to pay the higher, unjustified fees. This is extremely BAD for consumers. This is BAD for the millions of organizations that use a .org domain name. These organizations will have no choice but to pay higher fees and be entirely at mercy to PIR. It is virtually impossible to switch away from a .org domain name and use an alternative extension, simply because of enormous switching costs. Imagine if RedCross.org did not want to pay the higher renewal costs. PIR (the organization ICANN is considering granting unrestricted pricing ability to) will argue that they can switch their Internet web address to use a different domain extension other than .org. However, this is not realistic or possible. Can you imagine how much time and effort it would take to move away from .org to a new domain name? think about all of the branding and marketing RedCross.org has done over the years. Think about all of the 30,000 employees using a RedCross.org email address. They can not give up or abandon their domain name because of all of that lost email and lost contacts with donors, channel partners, vendors, other organizations, etc. Imagine your company abandoning your email address tomorrow. How will all of your existing contacts reach out to contact you? This is why it is impossible for any large organization to switch away from their existing .org domain name. Not to mention re-coding the website, back end technical infrastructure, DNS routing, building up new search engine rankings, PR, marketing, branding and all of the goodwill that RedCross.org has invested into its domain name. The switching cost are extraordinary. This new proposed .ORG Registry Agreement directly harms all non-profit originations who use a .org domain name -- as they will have no choice but be forced to pay higher, unjustified rates. Ironically, the old .ORG registry agreement allows PIR to increase prices by 10% per year. Why remove this restriction? This clause is in place to ultimately protect consumers/registrants. Now you want to remove pricing caps? ICANN is giving absolutely no regard for the public at large and the 10+ million end consumer registrants. It is foolish for ICANN to propose this new .ORG Registry Agreement without considering consumers. Shame on ICANN for acting in the narrow interest of one single entity (PIR) and not even thinking twice about the 10+ million registrants throughout the world. ICANN - We understand your allegiance is to the contracted parties - but why and how did we get to this place? ICANN used to have the public interest litmus test - making sure that every decision ICANN makes was in the public's best interest. Becky Burr said it was very important to include consumers and the public in the multi-stakeholder process. But this is obviously not the case anymore. ICANN has an obligation to act in the public interest and to protect consumers and the public at large. But for whatever reason, ICANN is handing PIR the keys to the treasure chest (which has lots of gold within to milk from end consumers who will be forced to pay higher prices.) There is absolutely no reason for granting one company the unrestricted ability to increase prices. Without any cost justification. Or without a valid and legitimate reason for increasing prices on an extremely captive audience -- who has no choice but to use .org domain names. PIR will not have to provide any rationale for increases in prices. They will not need to show or demonstrate increase in costs. PIR will simply be able to announce a price hike and apply it on their base of 10+ million registrants. Any price hike will be passed along to the end users and ICANN is causing direct and concrete harm to an extremely captive audience. Antitrust experts paying attention? These price hikes will benefit nobody other than PIR, the contracted registry for .org domain names. Keep in mind that the .org Registry Agreement will become the second most lucrative ICANN contract (in terms of dollar amounts) behind the .com Registry Contract. The amount of money at stake is enormous. Why would ICANN want to do this? Let me offer up an explanation. PIR has successfully infiltrated the ICANN multi-stakeholder process over the years. Even today, there remains significant conflicts of interest. Examples: ***Avri Doria -- current ICANN board member. Avri is a sustaining member of the Internet Society and currently holds the position of Steering Committee Chair for North America. The Internet Society is the SAME organization that created PIR in 2002 -- a not-for-profit corporation to manage, enhance and expand the .org domain. According to the Internet Society's website, "The Internet Society is responsible for appointing the PIR Board of Directors." Both the Internet Society and PIR are essentially one in the same. ***Suzanne Woolf -- currently serves as a liaison to the ICANN Board of Directors. She is a member of the ICANN Root Server System Advisory Committee and ARIN Advisory Council and actively participates in NANOG and IETF. In the past, Ms. Woolf has excused herself from being involved in the gTLD program due to her conflict of interest. Suzanne is currently on PIR board of directors. ***Maarteen Botterman -- currently serving on the ICANN board of Directors. Chairman of the Public Interest Registry from 2008 through 2016. ***Matthew Shears -- currently serving on the ICANN board of Directors. Matthew was the Internet Society's first Public Policy Director. ***Roberto Gaetano -- served six years on the ICANN Board, with three as Liaison of the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC). Currently on PIR board of directors. ***Ram Mohan -- past ICANN Board member. Also, co-founder of PIR and CTO of Afilias (registry operator for .org) ***Rinalia Abdul Rahim -- past ICANN board member (2014 -- 2017.) She was just named the Senior Vice President of strategy and implementation to The Internet Society on December 2018. Timing is quite coincidental! ***Paul Diaz -- served as the chair of ICANN's Registries Stakeholder Group from 2015--2018. Currently vice president of Policy for PIR. ***Lise Fuhr -- chaired the ICANN Cross Community Working Group for the IANA Stewardship Transition. She also serves on the Internet Society Public Interest Registry Board of Directors & Currently on PIR board of directors. ***Jeffrey Bedser -- member of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Council since 2007. Currently on PIR board of directors. ***Narelle Clark -- member of the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group. Currently on PIR board of directors. ***Jay Daley -- member of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee and the ICANN Customer Standing Committee. Currently on PIR board of directors. ***Andrew Sullivan -- deeply involved in the ICANN and IANA stewardship transition and principal contributor to the Variant Issues Project, undertaken by ICANN. Andrew was part of the team that collaborated with the Internet Society to launch PIR and take over operation of the .org domain extension. Currently Internet Society CEO and President. ***Brian Cimbolic -- part of the Registry Stakeholder Group, is part of the Rights Protection Mechanisms group and Security Framework Drafting team at ICANN. Currently Deputy General Counsel at PIR. ***Jonathon Nevett -- chair of the ICANN Registrars Constituency from 2006 through 2009. Currently President and CEO of PIR and past co-founder of Donuts. PIR is deeply involved with ICANN. ICANN is about to create the second most lucrative TLD contract in the world -- worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Did ICANN conduct an economic study? Did ICANN consider the switching cost for end consumers? Or it seems ICANN totally forgot about its mission to serve the public-- and it could care less what the 10+ million registrars are forced to pay for their domain registrations. But who is representing the interest of the 10+ million .org registrants at ICANN? It's sad to truly understand what ICANN has become. ICANN could care less about the public -- its mission today is to enrich the pocketbooks of the contracted registries. Without any cost justification whatsoever. And the irony of this whole thing, PIR is a non-profit, supposed to be acting in the best interest of the public. Put this out for completive bid! What a mess ICANN. -Don

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Removal of .org registration price cap
by Craig Smith April 12, 2019

April 12, 2019

I'm writing to request that ICANN reconsiders removing registration price caps on .org domains. .org is one of the most widely used and recognized TLD's. If price caps are removed, registration and renewal of these domains may become uneconomical, forcing many important organizations to change their addresses and threatening the prominence of .org. Unlike newer gTLD’s, .org is already very established. Allowing PIR, the registry operator, to act monopolistically with such a prominent TLD goes against what the Web should be. ~~~ Craig Smith Michigan State University Student craig(a)craigsmith.dev | www.craigsmith.dev

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Zak Muscovitch April 10, 2019

April 10, 2019

Please see the Comment of the Internet Commerce Association, in connection with the Proposed Renewal of the .org Registry Agreement. I have appended the Comment in plain text below, and have also attached the Comment in PDF format. Yours truly, Zak Muscovitch General Counsel, ICA InternetCommerce.org .... April 10, 2019 ICANN 12025 Waterfront Drive, Suite 300 Los Angeles, California 90094-2536, USA Attn: Mr. Russ Weinstein, Global Domains Division Dear Mr. Weinstein: Re: Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement I write to you on behalf of members of the Internet Commerce Association. Founded in 2006, the Internet Commerce Association (the "ICA") is a non-profit trade organization representing domain name registrants, including domain name investors, domain name secondary marketplaces, domain name brokers, escrow service companies, and related service providers. The ICA's mission is to assist with the development of domain name related policy. ICA members own a substantial percentage of all Internet domains and provide crucial domain name-related services to millions of Internet users. We are pleased to provide herein, our comments on the Proposed Renewal of the .org Registry Agreement (the "Proposed .org Renewal Agreement"). 1. ICANN Once Again Circumvents Dedicated Volunteers When it Comes to URS and So-Called "Bottom-up Multi-Stakeholder" Policy Development ICANN prides itself on bottom-up multi-stakeholder policy development, but yet again, ICANN staff has attempted to circumvent the established policy development process. The Proposed .org Renewal Agreement includes Uniform Rapid Suspension ("URS") when ICANN Staff are well aware that the question of whether URS should become a Consensus Policy is currently undergoing extensive review by the Rights Protection Mechanism Working Group (the "RPM WG"). In fact, the question of whether URS should be applicable to all gTLD's as a Consensus Policy is one of the primary questions that numerous experts from the ICANN community have been engaged in for the last two years. These experts have dedicated thousands of person hours to determining whether URS should be a Consensus Policy and yet ICANN Staff has purported to circumvent them and render all these efforts largely moot with the unilateral implementation of URS in registry agreements as they come up for renewal. It is an affront to the ICANN Community, and in particular to those dedicated volunteers that are following the established policy development process, that right under the noses of the ICANN Board, ICANN Staff continue to subvert and circumvent the required procedures by unilateral implementation of policy. This is at least the 7th instance where the Global Domains Division ("GDD") has circumvented the policy development process by unilateral introduction of the URS and ICANN has been put on notice through Comments by various parties on each occasion.[i] The question then becomes whether there is any point in continuing to engage in the established "bottom-up multi-stakeholder model" if efforts from volunteers, included members of the Internet Commerce Association, are ostensibly engaged in mere "busy work" at tremendous expense and opportunity cost, when the actual policy making happens behind closed doors by ICANN Staff. Given that ICANN Staff has ignored all previous entreaties to abide by the established policy development procedure when it comes to URS, it must be concluded that ICANN pays mere lip service to the bottom-up multi-stakeholder model and putting the Proposed .org Renewal Agreement out for public comment is mere window dressing. Nevertheless, once again, and despite every indication that ICANN Staff remains intent upon continuing their unilateral policy making mission and circumventing its dedicated volunteers, we must demand that ICANN await the completion of the Working Group's deliberations on the inclusion of URS as a Consensus Policy and refrain from unilateral imposition. 2. Does ICANN Care About Non-Profit Registrants and the Public Interest? We are very troubled by the what appears to be ICANN Staff's complete disregard for registrants and the public interest when it comes to the removal of all price caps in the Proposed .org Renewal Agreement. The .org registry is one of the original top-level domains, established in 1985 along with .com, .us, .edu., .gov, .mil, and .net, and has grown to become the third largest gTLD registry comprising more than 11 million registrations and 6.4% of all gTLD registrations[ii]. According to Public Interest Registry, the current .org registry operator under contract with ICANN, "since its inception in 1985, org has empowered and mobilized over 10 million websites, serving as a reliable online venue for organizations, companies, clubs, and individuals to communicate with their core audiences about a shared interest, passion or cause". As such, the .org gTLD has a unique and crucial place in the name space for millions of non-profit organizations who have invested in their .org web presence and rely upon the continued affordability of their .org domain name. Non-profit organizations all over the world who rely upon .org, include the American Cancer Society (Cancer.org) Wikipedia (Wikipedia.org ), Unicef (Unicef.org) Children International (Children.org) Save the Children (SaveTheChildren.org) and millions more, including much smaller organizations, non-profits, and charities started by individuals established to raise awareness and assist with various causes in the public interest. The .org registry operator itself, Public Interest Registry, as its name implies, and as it expressly states, "serves the public interest" as a not-for-profit organization created by the Internet Society (InternetSociety.org) a non-profit organization that is a "global cause-driven organization" that is "dedicated to ensuring that the Internet stays open, transparent and defined by you". Accordingly, the .org registry holds a special place in the namespace; it is primarily and specifically used by non-profits and similar public interest organizations, and thereby is substantially different in character both in relation to primarily commercial legacy gTLD's such as .com, and in relation to new open gTLD's such as .xyz and .dev, which were essentially created, bought, and paid for by commercial enterprises relatively recently, and which do not have an established mandate or registrant base dedicated to non-profit activities. Moreover, the new gTLDs created entirely new namespaces where any registrant knew that they were subject to price changes and price increases at the whim of the new gTLD operator. It was clearly 'buyer beware' in the new gTLDs. In contrast, with legacy extensions such as .org, the name spaces were not bought and paid for by the registry operator and the reasonable expectation of .org registrants was that prices would be capped in order for pricing to remain stable and reasonable, particularly having regard to the nature of the namespace which is expressly and decidedly not commercial in nature. The operators of legacy extensions such as .org don't "own" those name spaces. They were created for the public at large and are to be administered in the public interest by ICANN as essentially a trustee. The contracted registry operators are merely providing a service of maintaining the database and the underlying infrastructure on behalf of ICANN which is the caretaker of the public interest in the name spaces. That is why it is so surprising and concerning that ICANN Staff expressly stated that the ostensible objective in removing the price caps on .org registrations under the existing Registry Agreement, was to "align" it with the current "base registry agreement". First of all, the crucial problem with this purported "alignment" is that in effect it constitutes a fundamental policy making initiative that is beyond the scope of ICANN Staff without the support of the established policy development process. Second, this purported "aligning" totally disregards the fact that .org is a unique legacy registry that caters to non-profit and similar organizations, in the public interest, Although "alignment" may be convenient from an administrative perspective, there is no factual or legitimate policy basis for treating the .org registry the same as all others, when it is clearly different and clearly unique, with millions of non-profits and similar organizations who are already established and ones which are yet to be established in the future, all relying upon a distinct domain name space that is geared towards their specific needs. So, other than conveniently "aligning" registry agreements to purportedly treat all registries alike despite their respective and dramatically different mandates, registrant base, and histories, what justification is there for unlimited price increases? There is no evidence whatsoever that the .org registry requires unlimited additional funds to maintain reliable operations. There is no evidence that the .org registry requires unlimited additional funds to finance the goods works of the Internet Society. There is no evidence that the .org registry needs unlimited funds in order to "compete" with other for-profit registries, particularly when the current operator, PIR, is a not-for-profit organization. In short, there is simply no justification for permitting the .org registry operator to raise prices at all, let alone with a sky-is-the-limit approach. What would the effect of a 25% price increase on the current $9.05 wholesale cost be on the more than 11 million .org registrants? It would raise an additional $2.26 per domain name, for a windfall of nearly $25 million in a single year. Over 10 years, such a raise would amount to nearly $250 million - in additional, new money on top of the already satisfactory and lucrative $9.05 that the registry currently charges. What would a 100% price increase look like? It would likely mean a nearly $100 million additional profit in a single year alone, and nearly $1 billion over the course of ten years. And who would be responsible for paying? Of course, it would be the 11 million .org registrants, many of which are charities and non-profit organizations working in the public interest. In other words, there would be a massive, unjustified transfer of money from charities and non-profits to a contracted registry operator, paid for with charitable donations and membership dies from charities and non-profits. This is not to begrudge PIR, which we have immense respect and admiration for and which is run in an exemplary fashion whereby it is fortunately able to fund the good works of the Internet Society. Rather, we find it incomprehensible and entirely unjustified that ICANN would decide to fund one particular non-profit working for the public interest on the backs of millions of others. ICANN should also be especially cognizant of the fact that millions of charities and not-for-profits who may not be paying close attention to the .org domain name contract renewal negotiation, and have implicitly placed their trust in ICANN to look after them. Even if a price hike were only a couple dollars per year for a charity or non-profit, an increase which of course is generally "affordable", across millions of organizations this collectively amounts to a massive sum, and it is ICANN which is exclusively in the position of being entrusted for looking at the collective amount being charged and must justify it to itself and to the public. The public interest in the .org registry must be looked after by someone, and that someone is ICANN. Moreover, the millions of .org registrants can't simply pick up and move to a different domain name if prices are jacked up. For example, a charity or non-profit who chose to "build a home" in .org and who invested heavily in web development, branding, and marketing all connected to the .org extension, did so with the reasonable expectation that ICANN would ensure, as the trustee of the .org registry in the public interest, that reasonable prices would be maintained. If a non-profit .org registrant is faced with a substantial price increase for renewing their domain name they would have little choice but to pay it or face the potentially even greater costs of moving locations, rebranding, and remarketing, not to mention to potentially massive issue of losing their original email address. Similarly, if a new non-profit rightly wants to take its place it the most suitable namespace for such organizations, and is met with a totally unjustifiable and expensive registration fee, it will force them to take their place in another less suitable registry. As such, existing registrants are a captive audience with little practical means of avoiding a registry-imposed price hike, and prospective non-profit registrants would be hugely disadvantaged if the price of a .org became unaffordable. Of course, it may be argued that 'just because ICANN has permitted the .org registry to jack up prices in an unlimited fashion, doesn't necessarily mean that the registry will'. Certainly, there has been price stability to-date because of the justifiable ICANN-imposed price caps, and the current registry operator has not always raised prices within the limits, even though they were permitted to do so pursuant to their existing Registry Agreement. Nevertheless, the Proposed Renewal Agreement takes all pricing caps off the table so that if the registry operator were to decide for one reason or another to take an entirely different pricing approach than it has to-date, such as jacking up prices by 100% even if it meant losing 20% of its existing registrant base and thereby garnering an even larger net profit despite the rise in prices, it would be ICANN that is left to explain how it could possibly have permitted its registry operator to act so oppressively and self-servingly in its operation of a fundamentally public resource that is supposed to be managed in the public interest. Even if such a contingency is unlikely, the question becomes why permit it at all. By altogether eliminating all price caps, ICANN is exposing itself to untold disaster to one of its most cherished and relied upon gTLD's merely because it wants to unjustifiably "align" the .org registry agreement with totally different commercial ones. Clearly the more prudent policy approach is to prevent such a contingency in the first place rather than leave it entirely up to the hired registry operator to "do the right thing". The .org registry is simply too important to be permitted to be the subject of its operator's discretion, even if well meaning. ICANN, as the ultimate trustee of it, must not entirely abdicate its crucial fiduciary responsibility to a contracted party who may at some point in the future, act is its own best interest instead of the public's best interest. Only ICANN can be responsible for the public interest in the .org registry. It can also be argued that existing .org registrants are somehow "protected" because they can renew their .org domain name for ten years before being subjected to uncapped price hikes under the Proposed Renewal Agreement. The fact is however, that there is no requirement that registrants be expressly notified that they had better register for ten years in advance or be subject to unknown, indeterminate, and potentially game-changing renewal costs. As such, it is likely that millions of charities and non-profits will not take advantage of the ability to renew for ten years. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is simply no justification for compelling the 11 million .org registrants to pay to PIR, the aggregate of ten years' worth of fees in advance resulting in a massive cash infusion to the registry operator. Thirdly, once caps are removed, once the initial ten-year period has elapsed, every single registrant is subject to untold, indeterminate, and potentially substantial price hikes, meaning that this is nothing but a temporary reprieve. Lastly, the numerous prospective .org registrants who want to establish themselves in the most appropriate registry for a charity or non-profit at some point in the next ten years, could find themselves subject to capricious and expensive registration fees for .org domain names and as such receive no benefit whatsoever from the temporary reprieve. The removal of all pricing caps would come with little or no notice to .org registrants, and with no assurance whatsoever that they would not be continuing to build their web presence in a namespace that could be effectively taken away from them one day based upon arbitrary and unpredictable price hikes by a contracted registry operator without any ICANN-imposed restrictions on pricing. If all price caps are to be removed for some unjustified reason, then at very least, ICANN should insist that the registry operator irrevocably undertake to not raise prices beyond an agreed amount for the duration of the term of the agreement. In that fashion at least, the registry agreements would be "aligned" but registrants would have the certainty and predictability of reasonable pricing, which is crucial particularly in a namespace dedicated to public interest endeavors. Yours truly, INTERNET COMMERCE ASSOCIATION Per: Zak Muscovitch General Counsel, ICA Endnotes: i) See for example "Comments Run Overwhelmingly Against ICANN Staff Attempt to Impose URS on Legacy gTLD's, June 22, 2015 (https://www.internetcommerce.org/comments-oppose-dottravel-urs/) see also "Comment on Proposed Renewal of .Coop Sponsored Registry Agreement, Business Constituency Submission, July 27, 2018 (https://www.bizconst.org/assets/docs/positions-statements/2018/2018_07July_…) See also: "ICA Files ICANN Comment on Proposed .Museum RA Renewal", October 22, 2017 (https://www.internetcommerce.org/ica-files-icann-comment-on-proposed-museum…) ii) See; https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tldtype/generic (March 29, 2019) ________________________________ [i] See for example "Comments Run Overwhelmingly Against ICANN Staff Attempt to Impose URS on Legacy gTLD's, June 22, 2015 (https://www.internetcommerce.org/comments-oppose-dottravel-urs/) see also "Comment on Proposed Renewal of .Coop Sponsored Registry Agreement, Business Constituency Submission, July 27, 2018 (https://www.bizconst.org/assets/docs/positions-statements/2018/2018_07July_…) See also: "ICA Files ICANN Comment on Proposed .Museum RA Renewal", October 22, 2017 (https://www.internetcommerce.org/ica-files-icann-comment-on-proposed-museum…) [ii] See; https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tldtype/generic (March 29, 2019)

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