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

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Web Developer 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 Vittorio Mattei 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] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Thorsten Schillo April 28, 2019

April 28, 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 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 All the best Thorsten Schillo they are already making plenty of money. Sent from my smartphone, please excuse brevity and typos.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Do Not Remove Price Caps
by Oisin O'Neill April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I am a domain name 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. 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 Cassie Mothership April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I have read about the proposal to limit restrictions registries can charge for the .org TLD in order to match the contracts associated with the new TLDs. The cost on new TLDs is over double the cost of the original open access TLDs .com, .net, and .org. By removing the restrictions on .org, which still enjoys the recognition granted to it by its history, it creates an opportunity for price gouging in a market where many individuals and small businesses will not have the opportunity to make changes since changing a domain name is a HUGE deal. It means changing e-mail addresses that have been given to business contacts many years ago, losing all SEO history, making all old marketing materials obsolete, etc. When people use a new TLD, they are aware of the risks of price gouging, and the sheer number of options available serves to suppress the price, although they are already higher because so many of them are operated by Donuts who does enjoy a virtual monopoly their price is limited by their newness and the fact that they are not immediately recognizable as a domain name in the same way that .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov are. There is no reason to allow Public Interest Registry free reign on pricing on a product that was given its value by the public. This is fundamentally different from the new TLDs, whose value has had to be created by Donuts or other registrars, who risked their own money when they applied for them. If anything, the contracts for the new gTLDs should be adjusted to reflect the restrictions on price increases in the original TLDs.

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

April 28, 2019

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 .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.

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Price caps on .org TLD
by Josh Watzman April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I am an owner of a .org domain, and I am strongly opposed to removing the price caps on the .org legacy TLD and ask ICANN to please not implement this part of the proposal. Unlike the new gTLDs, the value in the .org legacy TLD was not created by the organisation which now currently runs it. It should not be simply handed over with no benefit to all of the registrants in .org which helped create that value -- registrants who invested in .org on the understanding that it is a sort of community trust, not a gTLD owned by a specific organisation. Because of the great value in .org, there is a huge risk that its operator would use its inherent monopoly to raise prises in order to extract this value which would have unfairly been simply handed to them. And so again I urge ICANN not to implement this part of the proposal -- to not give away this value that we all have created in the .org legacy TLD. Thank you for reading, Josh Watzman

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Do not remove price caps from .org
by Rohit Gaur April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

Hello Sir/Madam, It has come to my notice that you will be renewing the .org registry agreement. Please DO NOT remove the price caps from .org as it will lead to a price hike in the .org domain names. This is one thing helping them save money for good deeds. They are non-profits, this is unfair. Please consider. Thanking you in anticipation. Regards, Rohit

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] (no subject)
by Karl Hamilton April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

Dear sir/madam. I am opposed to the raising of prices for .org domains. We are captive customers and you know this. Ref: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/org-renewal-2019-03-18-en, specifically * Pricing for Domain Name Registrations and Registry Services (Section 2.10 of the .org renewal agreement): In alignment with the base registry agreement, the price cap provisions in the current .org agreement, which limited the price of registrations and allowable price increases for registrations, are removed from the .org renewal agreement. This provision would allow the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to increase the wholesale price of .org domains by any amount it desires. There is already a 10% annual increase provision in place, which is plenty of room for PIR. I vehemently oppose your proposal. Regards, Karl Hamilton

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[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Please do not let .org process go unchecked
by Randy C. Klug April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I support many non-profit organizations and a price change would be out of their budget. Randy

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