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

Re: [Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Julian Reisenberger – MigrationWork CIC April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I assist several non-profit organisations with .org gTLDs as a web developer. They are all small organisations and associations, almost all registered as non-profit or community interest organisations, and are run as small organisations or groups of cooperating people with profits (by definition) fed back into the organisation’s purpose or the communities they work with. Their homepages are their most effective medium of communication, and it’s important that they can clearly differentiate themselves from commercial offerings through the use of the .org gTLD. I am therefore writing to oppose the lift on the price cap for the .org domains. The frequently limited funds of small non-profit organisations are best used for their respective (charitable) purpose, not for admin-related aspects, especially when a common criticism levelled at non-profits by (non-)donators is the proportion of donations that do not make it to the end purpose but are required for organisational costs. In my view – and of many others (as seen in the other comments) – it is important that such domain gTLDs do not become the target of the speculative free-for-all we have become accustomed to with other TLDs. Thank you for listening! Julian Reisenberger

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Weeby April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

Dears ICANN, We can't belive it! How can ICANN thinking to removing the registration fee caps on .org domains. These domains are used by nonprofit trade associations and individual member associations as well as tax-exempt charities. Weeby Foundation is helping people like students and researchers to be online with no charge - please don't allow nonprofit organization to be subjected to this usurious fee increase. Please DON'T .. DON'T!

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Domains
by Andrew Lee April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

Dear ICANN, .Org should be a free for all DNS tld. Not everything is about money, and ICANN absolutely should not be. Thanks, Andrew -- Andrew Lee Chairman of the Board London Trust Media Holdings <https://londontrustmedia.com/>

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Andrew Yoon April 28, 2019

April 28, 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. -- Andrew Yoon andrewyoon.art | nothing-to-say.org

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Do not sell out our legacy TLDs!
by mardanlin＠gmail.com April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

It is incomphrensibly immoral to give a corporation the opportunity to buy these legacy TLDs out from the internet as a whole. There is too much corporate welfare as it is, stop selling out and do the right thing!

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Alex Mizrahi April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I am a .org registrant. ICANN staff 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 policy making is supposed to be a ‘bottom up, multi-stakeholder model’. I believe that legacy gTLDs are fundamentally different from for-profit new gTLDs. Legacy TLDs are essentially a public trust, unlike new gTLDs which were created, bought and paid for by private interests. Registrants of legacy TLDs are entitled to price stability and predictability, and should not be subject to price increases with no maximums. Unlike new gTLDs, registrants of legacy TLDs registered their names and made their online presence on legacy TLDs on the basis that price caps would continue to exist. Unrestrained price increases on the millions of .org registrants who are not-for-profits or non-profits would be unfair to them. Unchecked price increases have the potential to result in hundreds of millions of dollars being transferred from these organizations to one non-profit, the Internet Society, with .org registrants receiving no benefit in return. ICANN should not allow one non-profit nearly unlimited access to the funds of other non-profits. ICANN appears to be entirely catering to registries by removing price caps. ICANN should stand up for the public interest and registrants!

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by James Crowley April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I am a .org registrant (non-profit). 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. The Uniform Rapid Suspension policy is too new and untested to apply on domain names that may be 20 years old or more. With the URS, the domain names could be taken down in a matter of days with little notice. 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?

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Christopher Caldarella April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I am a domain name 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 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.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Keep Existing Rules in Place
by Mark Branly April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I understand the desire to normalize the way that all TLD contracts are structured and that there may be pressure from the registries to do so. However, this is simply not fair to domain registrants. Every .org domain owner bought into the deal with a guaranteed stability and for them, this would be changing the rules mid-game. I don’t have the numbers on how many .org domain name owners are small, scrappy, hard-working, and often struggling, local community based non-profits working for the public good. But I’d bet that it is huge chunk of them. By changing the rules, you would be taking money from our local communities and jeopardizing these organization's ability to continue operating all to give the money to a private company who is doing just fine—literally stealing from the poor to give to the rich. I beg you not to do that. --- Mark Branly Registered Creative (919) 680-3440 registeredCreative.com <http://registeredcreative.com/>

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Price caps
by jerry williams April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

Please do not remove price caps. We are a non profit ministry. Thanks Jerry Williams Sent from a phone

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