In the name of pursuing its "stability and security" mission, ICANN has destabilized the .org name space. The prospect has now been raised of a "refugee crisis" in which displaced nonprofits uproot themselves in search of a safe haven, with Evan proposing one version. If the nonprofits have to leave their .org domain names behind, that then creates a security crisis in which bad actors could take over and mispurpose the abandoned .org domain names. On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 4:37 PM John McCormac <jmcc@hosterstats.com> wrote:
On 05/12/2019 19:29, Nat Cohen wrote:
John,
Thanks for the stats. I expect that as you mention that the registration momentum will continue with ccTLDs rather than with gTLDs.
The gTLD to ccTLD shift is a subtle one, Nat, Basically what happens is that people in the ccTLD's country begin to think of the ccTLD as "their" TLD. That's a very powerful dynamic and there is an element of that with .ORG. What also happens with ccTLDs is that the number of one-off domain names rises. These are domain names that only exist in that ccTLD and not in the gTLDs.
Many of the national ccTLD domain authorities are effective managers. They treat registries as service providers rather than as owners of the name spaces. They don't grant perpetual contracts on the rationale that registry service providers won't be willing to invest in operating a registry unless they are given a perpetual right to do so. Instead, like PIR itself, they put out registry operations for regular rebid. This way the cost to operate a registry falls, and those savings can be passed down to end-users.
Some of them are excellent operations and completely in tune with their registrants. They also build up a massive amount of institutional knowledge. The other aspect of ccTLDs, the non-repurposed ones, is that they are controlled by legislation and by the local government rather than ICANN. There were some cases where ccTLDs have been redelegated but the healthy ones tend to have a lot of these aspects in common.
They create stable pricing environments where companies and nonprofits can develop an online brand knowing that they won't face inflated, unpredictable charges when it comes time to renew their domain names in the future. In short, they look out for the public interest.
Agreed. Price sensitivity is not a major factor with some ccTLDs in that there are ccTLDs where the registrants will pay a higher than .COM registration fee without question. This is because people in the country expect that a new website will have a domain name in the ccTLD rather than another TLD.
What I've seen with some countries and the non-COM legacy gTLDs is that where registrars or the registry increases prices, brand protection registrations and other registrations drop because the gTLD is no longer considered relevant to the businesses or the registrant. At a country level, it is hitting .BIZ and .INFO hard. The impact of price increases can take about a year from the increase to play out on the TLDs. What will happen if .ORG starts to encounter problems is that the .ORG will be dropped from the registrar websites and the number of active registrars with new registrations in the zone will decrease.
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