[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Opposition to the proposed renewal of .org Registry Agreement
I am writing in regard to the org gTLD renewal proposal, specifically with regard to the proposal to remove the fee cap. I am the holder of an org domain registered in 1995, gamenet.ORG. But more importantly, I am the end-user of hundreds, if not thousands, of .org domains provided for the public benefit. I oppose the removal of the fee cap. Since the org domain registry is non-competitive, and the actual service provided is trivial, removing the cap simply allows the registry provider to select an arbitrary profit margin in providing a service to a captive market. The fee cap should only be removed if market competition is in place throughout the entire service stack - that is, it is made possible to register a domain in the org gTLD via an alternate registry - or if ICANN moves the org gTLD registry service to the lowest-cost provider on a regular basis. If my personal use domain is eventually priced outside of my ability to hold it, it's a small personal loss of trivial consequence. If that were to happen to the thousands of other public-benefit .org holders, it would be a major catastrophe. Every action ICANN takes should fulfill its mission statement of being "a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable," and this proposal fails to meet that criteria. Sincerely, Mike Kienenberger
participants (1)
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Mike Kienenberger