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

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Nikhil Jain 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.

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Qasim Ali 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.

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Price Caps on registration fees should not be removed
by Luke Schlather April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

The proposal to remove caps on registration fees seems ill-conceived and transparently like an attempt to allow registries to manage monopolies on domain registration where they can set their own price. Given the immense damage any organization reliant on a domain would suffer if they had to change their domain, this seems deliberately designed to give registries unlimited ability to extort their clients. Please leave the price caps in place. Thank you, Luke Schlather

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Keep .org Affordable!
by Devin Platt April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I quit my job and moved in with my parents so that I could pursue my dream of starting a non profit organization. My ability to do this depends on my domain name being affordable. Changing domain names would be very difficult. Among other things, I would take a large SEO penalty, and SEO is already extremely hard for the little guy as it is. Please consider the little guy, the one who is already sacrificing so much for a cause they care about. Thanks, Devin Platt https://www.wikiclaim.org

1 0

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

April 28, 2019

I am a domain name registrant. 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. 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.

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement
by Nate Hashem 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?

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Comments on certain changes proposed to the .org Registry Agreement
by Ethan Sweet April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

I am a .org registrant and a Company Director. I am additionally a Google Europe Scholar in the EMEA Region a former Internet Society Youth@IGF Fellow. My views do not represent those of Google or the Internet Society, however, these views do represent those of BR28 LTD, a Private Limited Company registered in England and Wales which joins these comments with me. ==Open Access is at the heart of .org== .org is a Top Level Domain with open access at its heart, managed by Public Internet Registry as created by the Internet Society .org is used by many people for many purposes, while initially not-for-profit restrictions were in place these were quickly lifted, today .org is an open space on which many diverse members of the Internet Community use. ==Open Access is good for the Internet== Open Access is fundamentally a good thing for the internet as a whole, we want as many people from all over the world to be able to benefit from the Internet, not just by consuming content on it, but creating it, by maximizing the reach of people who can be called members of the Internet Community and enabling their meaningful participation in this unique global network we maximize the benefits for every participate through a multitude of views and perspectives on a range of topics. This is fundamentally a good thing and is why countless bodies work towards increasing access and connectivity to the internet. ==Price Controls enable Open Access== Price Controls enable those of limited income to be full participants in the Internet Community, sometimes there are costs associated with using the internet, we accept them as a necessary evil to ensure a stable and well functioning internet but I am sure we all agree they should not be higher than necessary. Price Controls ensure this provision is held true, and fundamentally ensure that those of limited income can be full participants in all parts of our shared internet community. Critics may say "why do we not impose certain controls on other parts of the technical process, such as hosting?" The reason is that hosting is not a natural monopoly whereas DNS is, unless ICANN say otherwise PIR is the only registry that may issue .org domains and therefore there is no economical incentive (although there may be a mission based one) to keep prices low. ==Legacy TLD providers share a unique responsibility== Legacy TLD providers have been around for many years longer than many others, the exposure of members of the Internet Community to legacy TLD providers is much larger than those of new TLD providers (how many internet users have seen .com versus .sucks?), if a user is looking for a domain name they are likely to look towards the well established legacy TLD providers first before the new TLD providers, this is simply because awareness of these providers is higher, but also places a unique responsibility on these providers to serve these users who may have limited knowledge in good faith and to not place barriers in front of them. If a user sees very high prices on these legacy TLDs, they may assume that this is normal across all TLDs and give up with gaining their own domain name. This en-masse would be a huge loss for the internet and not only increase Internet Consolidation but push back on the open access of the internet as a whole to everyone. ==ICANN's ultimate responsibility is to serve the Internet Community== TLD management is fundamentally a monopoly, as a community we have agreed that it is for for many many years, I recall when ALTDNS was briefly in existence but was rejected by the majority of the Internet Community, the reasoning why was that a disagreement on standards could fundamentally split the internet, which would be catastrophic, but also because we believed we could create a body accountable to us, the Internet Community, to manage and oversee the Domain Name System in our interests, we created this body as ICANN. ICANN holds a monopoly on the Domain Name System and operates it in our name. ICANN should therefore side with those Internet Users who may no longer be able to afford a domain if prices were to increase. Sincerely, -Ethan Sweet -The Directors of BR28 LTD

1 0

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

April 28, 2019

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Don't remove the price limit
by Kegan Thorrez April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

Existing websites signed up with the current prices, and drastic price increases would mean their identities, location, discoverability, trademarks, etc would be at risk. These TLDs were created by the community, not by Public Interest Registry, so Public Interest Registry shouldn't have the power to drastically increase prices. More details: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190423_spurious_justifications_for_eliminat… Kegan Thorrez

1 0

[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Motivation for increasing prices
by Sylvia Else April 28, 2019

April 28, 2019

One might wonder what a non-profit corporation expects to gain from being permitted to increase its fees. The answer, of course, is that the increased income can be distributed to the company's officers as salary. So a non-profit entity has as much motivation to engage in monopolistic behaviour as any other, and will do so if given the chance. The org TLD is perhaps viewed as a testing ground for this, since holders of its subdomains are unlikely to have as much clout as would holder of .com domains, for example. ICANN might care to take into account that its entire control of the Internet domain name system is based on the root server addresses built into operating systems, and those can be changed if the domain name system turns into a method of extracting rent from the existing domain name holders. All it would take would be agreement between Microsoft, Apple, Google (for Android) and a few Linux distributions, and ICANN would be out of a job. The net, org, and com registrars knew what they were getting into. If they don't want to operate within the existing pricing constraints, then they should pass the job onto someone who does. Wanting to change the rules now is like moving into a suburb next to an airport, and then complaining about the noise. Sylvia Else

1 0