Somewhat reminiscent of what was suggested as the third position in the ALAC Statement of May 2019 on the .org RA renewal. *Justine Chew* ----- On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 at 00:03, Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net> wrote:

I can't find an copy of the NCSG letter on the ICANN website but a copy is posted on the Internet Gov. org site ( https://www.internetgovernance.org/2019/12/11/icann-told-to-make-ethos-capit... )

NSCG is asking for (among other things):

*A revised notification procedure in which wholesale price increases of any amount give ORG registrants 6 months to renew their domains for periods of up to 20 years at the pre-existing annual rate. Implementation of this revised notification procedure must be obligatory to both PIR as well as any registrar through which .org domain names are registered and/or renewed.*

Marita

On 1/5/2020 10:43 AM, Marita Moll wrote:

Milton Mueller suggested that angle quite awhile ago and I think it forms part of their letter to ICANN re: this issue. It is one of the contractual things that is actually within ICANN's purview and, from what I have read, would not be very appealing to a for profit private equity firm -- seriously limits their options.

Marita On 1/4/2020 10:40 PM, Jonathan Zuck wrote:

https://www.kickstartcommerce.com/about-that-10-year-renewal-strategy-for-co...

Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org

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Yes, understood, but thank you for making that clear. I, on the other hand, was reacting to Marita's comments. Justine ----- On Mon, 6 Jan 2020, 01:09 Jonathan Zuck, <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> wrote:

My point, to be clear, is that these price hikes really only affect the investor community and will, as Evan has suggested, help clear some clutter out of the secondary market.

Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org

------------------------------ *From:* CPWG <cpwg-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Justine Chew < justine.chew@gmail.com> *Sent:* Sunday, January 5, 2020 11:31:16 AM *To:* cpwg@icann.org <cpwg@icann.org> *Subject:* Re: [CPWG] The crux of the COM issue

Somewhat reminiscent of what was suggested as the third position in the ALAC Statement of May 2019 on the .org RA renewal.

*Justine Chew* -----

On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 at 00:03, Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net> wrote:

I can't find an copy of the NCSG letter on the ICANN website but a copy is posted on the Internet Gov. org site ( https://www.internetgovernance.org/2019/12/11/icann-told-to-make-ethos-capit... )

NSCG is asking for (among other things):

*A revised notification procedure in which wholesale price increases of any amount give ORG registrants 6 months to renew their domains for periods of up to 20 years at the pre-existing annual rate. Implementation of this revised notification procedure must be obligatory to both PIR as well as any registrar through which .org domain names are registered and/or renewed.*

Marita

On 1/5/2020 10:43 AM, Marita Moll wrote:

Milton Mueller suggested that angle quite awhile ago and I think it forms part of their letter to ICANN re: this issue. It is one of the contractual things that is actually within ICANN's purview and, from what I have read, would not be very appealing to a for profit private equity firm -- seriously limits their options.

Marita On 1/4/2020 10:40 PM, Jonathan Zuck wrote:

https://www.kickstartcommerce.com/about-that-10-year-renewal-strategy-for-co...

Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org

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Nat, I like the first part of your reasoning: it is not in the best interest of registrants to pay unjustified higher prices. However, the cost of a domain name for a plain user can be a few dimes higher because of the registry raising their prices, or orders of magnitude higher because the domain name they would like to get is available only in the secondary market. Different people might have different ideas on what is worse. Cheers, Roberto On 05.01.2020, at 18:28, Nat Cohen <ncohen@telepathy.com<mailto:ncohen@telepathy.com>> wrote: Jonathan, I find it disturbing that while you are participating in At-Large nominally as a representative of the best interests of end-users, you consistently adopt talking points pushed by Verisign and PIR and bash domain investors. While domain investors are affected by price hikes, so is each and every registrant of .org and .com. You have so far failed to explain why it is in the best interests of .org and .com registrants to pay unjustified higher prices to continue the use of their domain names, for the sole benefit of those registries that are already being overpaid for the services they provide. For those with an interest, here is the link to the ICA's statement laying out many reasons for concern with the handling and the terms of the proposed renewal of the .com agreement: https://www.internetcommerce.org/ica-statement-on-icanns-announced-changes-t... Regards, Nat Cohen President Telepathy, Inc. www.Telepathy.com<http://www.telepathy.com/> On Sun, Jan 5, 2020 at 12:09 PM Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org<mailto:JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org>> wrote: My point, to be clear, is that these price hikes really only affect the investor community and will, as Evan has suggested, help clear some clutter out of the secondary market. Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org<http://www.innovatorsnetwork.org/> ________________________________ From: CPWG <cpwg-bounces@icann.org<mailto:cpwg-bounces@icann.org>> on behalf of Justine Chew <justine.chew@gmail.com<mailto:justine.chew@gmail.com>> Sent: Sunday, January 5, 2020 11:31:16 AM To: cpwg@icann.org<mailto:cpwg@icann.org> <cpwg@icann.org<mailto:cpwg@icann.org>> Subject: Re: [CPWG] The crux of the COM issue Somewhat reminiscent of what was suggested as the third position in the ALAC Statement of May 2019 on the .org RA renewal. Justine Chew ----- On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 at 00:03, Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net<mailto:mmoll@ca.inter.net>> wrote: I can't find an copy of the NCSG letter on the ICANN website but a copy is posted on the Internet Gov. org site (https://www.internetgovernance.org/2019/12/11/icann-told-to-make-ethos-capit...) NSCG is asking for (among other things): A revised notification procedure in which wholesale price increases of any amount give ORG registrants 6 months to renew their domains for periods of up to 20 years at the pre-existing annual rate. Implementation of this revised notification procedure must be obligatory to both PIR as well as any registrar through which .org domain names are registered and/or renewed. Marita On 1/5/2020 10:43 AM, Marita Moll wrote: Milton Mueller suggested that angle quite awhile ago and I think it forms part of their letter to ICANN re: this issue. It is one of the contractual things that is actually within ICANN's purview and, from what I have read, would not be very appealing to a for profit private equity firm -- seriously limits their options. Marita On 1/4/2020 10:40 PM, Jonathan Zuck wrote: https://www.kickstartcommerce.com/about-that-10-year-renewal-strategy-for-co... Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org<http://www.innovatorsnetwork.org/> _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

On 05/01/2020 20:31, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

Let's be absolutely clear. From the pure PoV of non-registrant end users, domain investing is evil. It is a disease that extracts value out of the Internet rather than adding value. It impedes the ability of legitimate providers of Internet goods and services to affordably acquire useful names to identify themselves to end users.

What non-registrant end users? So someone registers pizza.example first. They do so before other pizza makers in the great country of Exampleland. Now the other pizza makers are upset because someone else has beaten them to the domain name. The sense of self-entitlement of some of these "non-registrant end users" is overwhelming. Most of them will never register a domain name and will never build a business or website on the Web. Some of them may not be certain that a Web outside of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram even exists or that such offence at domainers has been taken on their behalf. The other thing about people and businesses acquiring useful names to identify themselves on the web is that many of them already have business names. The bulk of registrations are actually these business names more so than generic domain names. Generic domain names as targeted by investors are quite difficult to protect from an intellectual property point of view because they are generic. Then the aspect of geography raises its head. Having a generic domain name like pizza.example might be well and good but people search for local pizzeria. People remember the name of their favourite local pizzeria so that's the business name that generally makes it to being a domain name.

"I got in the queue to buy it before you" does not constitute innovation. Domaining is transparently the Internet equivalent of ticket scalping and deserves all the public loathing that scalping attracts.

So who decides which prospective registrant should be entitled to a domain name?

Yup. And paying two dollars more a year for a domain is nothing to someone actually using it for something. Indeed if the money from a price hike goes into enhanced security and rules enforcement, the result is a benefit to registrants and the people who use their services.

And if someone is using that domain name to provide a pro-bono public service?

For those who have to judge the "value" of which domains to shed and which to keep when prices go up by such small amounts, there are no tears to be shed. Indeed I am amused at the reaction of those who are quite happy to let market forces determine selling prices but scream when anything close to that logic is used to determine their buying prices. It's practically the definition of exploitation.

The legacy gTLDs developed, after 2000, in an environment of relative price stability. The removal of the price caps has effectively created a destabilising factor in the market and unlike 2000, when everyone just had to have a .COM for credibility, there is increasing competition from ccTLDs.

Actually, it's not in the interest of registries or registrars to increase prices in a manner that causes domainers to flee as it hurts their volume. And as stated above, the result is not for their sole benefit, it also helps all the entrepreneurs and service providers that have a larger pool of affordable domains from which to choose as speculators abandon them.

Domainers are not the first to flee. The ones that are first to drop registrations are those to whom the TLD is not a core TLD to their interests. This is the dynamic behind the collapse of some of the legacy gTLDs. The reducing public profile of such a TLD also leads to a decrease in those developing websites on the TLD. Domainers, especially those who have registered highly generic domain names are often the last ones standing in a declining TLDs. Once a TLD begins to lose registrations, it also begins to lose active websites. Sales in a TLD generate free publicity for a TLD. Without that free publicity, the registry and the registrars have to promote the TLD. Most registrars won't waste time promoting failing TLDs. Registrars are heavily focused on promoting the TLDs that make them money. The phrase "a larger pool of affordable domains" sounds like the clueless competition arguments that the ICANN management were using to justify new gTLDs when there was an artificial shortage of deleting domain names caused by their failure to act on Domain Tasting. Once that artificial shortage was resolved, deleting domain names finally started making their way back to the market. However, premium deleting domain names with traffic were arguably hijacked by their registrars and passed to auction websites. (The counter argument from the registrar side is that the registrant no longer has any rights to the domain name when it expires.) Perhaps that's a more insidious subversion of the domain name life cycle that seems to have gone unnoticed. It is all too easy to blame domainers. After all, they are the ones paying all that money for these premium domain names. Some of them hope to flip them for a profit but some of the people you call domainers might actually create working websites and services. The reality is that there is no shortage of "good" domain names and domain name speculation is only a small part of the main TLD market. Like Gresham's Law, premium domain names generally get taken out of the market quickly and what's left are the ordinary domain names. But what constitutes a premium or valuable domain name actually changes. But it gets back to one simple question. Who decides what people can or cannot register? Regards...jmcc -- ********************************************************** John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/ 22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO IE * Skype: hosterstats.com **********************************************************

On 05/01/2020 22:08, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 16:59, John McCormac <jmcc@hosterstats.com <mailto:jmcc@hosterstats.com>> wrote:

But it gets back to one simple question. Who decides what people can or cannot register?

I'd be happy with something based on the regime already in widespread global use for trademarks: first-come, first-served, accompanied by an aggressive use-it-or-lose-it policy. To this I'd add restrictions on usurious resale markup.

And that gets into the argument over which "trademark" from which country has priority. :) Getting a bad flashback to the .EU fiasco and those iffy Benelux deposit "trademarks. Rather than a resale markup, a business plan and probationary period during which some real usage of the domain name for a service or website might be a better way to do things. I think that .BERLIN actually has this as part of its regulations and it is one of the stronger new gTLDs. Regards...jmcc -- ********************************************************** John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/ 22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO IE * Skype: hosterstats.com **********************************************************

On 05/01/2020 17:09, Jonathan Zuck wrote:

My point, to be clear, is that these price hikes really only affect the investor community and will, as Evan has suggested, help clear some clutter out of the secondary market.

Jonanthan, You and Evan are wrong. These price hikes affect all registrants of and some of them have built their presence on a TLD and cannot afford to rebrand. The secondary market of a gTLDs actually self-declutters. With .COM, over 2 million domain names are deleted each month. Some of these deletions are due to natural attrition but some of them are speculative registrations being dropped. TLDs without secondary markets tend to remain small. Price increases introduce instabilities into a domain name market and affect registrant confidence in a TLD. Much of the .ORG's registrations are brand protection registrations by registrants who have registered the same name across other TLDs. The .ORG is, by country of registrar, an overwhelmingly US-centric gTLD. There is a secondary market in .ORG but it is relatively small compared to that of .COM. Many of the domain names that have been washing out of the .ORG zone over the last year were discounted registrations which had zero chance of renewing. Discounting is a far greater threat to the stability of a TLD than any secondary market. In reality, unfettered discounting destroys the credibility of a TLD. It was unfortunate that ridiculously low "parking" rates (and therefore high levels of usage) were being claimed for some of the new gTLDs in the CCT-RT report. Over 80% of those new gTLD domain names were deleted within a year. For some domain names in the "parking" survey that CCT-RT used, over 95% of the domain names in the survey were deleted by the second renewal. (I included those stats on deletion rates and which usage categories had the highest deletion rates in the Domnomics book on the chapter on web usage and "parking".) This is a classic zonefile stuffing pattern where domain names are registered for a highly discounted fee in order to make a gTLD look big to the public but web usage rarely follows. These discounted registrations are then dropped when it comes time for them to be renewed at full fee. Healthy TLDs like .ORG do not have nearly complete zonefile replacement within a year. The .ORG is one of the most stable of the legacy gTLDs. People registering their domain name in .ORG tend to keep it. People who don't work with domain name statistics and web usage just don't appreciate how different the .ORG is to other gTLDs. The .ORG registry has made the right decisions in stopping volume discounting. This improved the quality of the TLD and the .ORG the most ccTLD-like of the main legacy gTLDs in that the registrants have an almost ccTLD-like loyalty to the .ORG in that they believe that it is *their* TLD much like ccTLD registrants identify with their ccTLD. The strange idea that the secondary market is some big, bad ogre devouring all the domain names in a TLD is wrong. The reality is quite different. The secondary market for most healthy TLDs is only a small percentage of the number of domain names registered in that TLD. That's because only a small percentage of generic domain names are targeted by domain name investors and speculators. The .ORG, in terms of investors, is an acquired taste as most of the speculation is confined to .COM because it is the biggest market. People see a few high value .ORG sales and assume that there's a big market. It is not. The reality is that most speculative registrations drop without ever being receiving an offer. All registrants are affected by price increases. Faced with increasing prices, some registrants will make plans to shift to other more stable TLDs and the shift will take approximately five years. The .ORG is currently being overtaken by ccTLDs. The bulk of its registrations are US but it has become increasingly irrelevant in most country level markets where the local ccTLDs have become the main TLD in the market. Even the .COM is struggling in some of these country level markets. Some ccTLD registries have historically offered free registrations for do-gooder and charity ventures. Price increases make registrants reconsider their registrations. I've been watching this trend hit the non-core legacy gTLDs for a few years now. Investors can generally hang on for longer. The real danger to .ORG is that price increases will start to affect development and usage in the TLD. Once that happens, websites stop being developed and developed ones are abandoned or redirected to the registrant's primary website in another TLD. But it is only those of us who run web usage surveys and who are actually part of the domain name industry will see this as declining usage and fewer newer registrations before it becomes widely evident. It would be great if more end-users got involved in ALAC as it seems that end-users are almost entirely absent and they are the ones will will be hit hardest by price increases. ICANN will probably form another CCT-RT to find out where all the domain names and registrants have gone but by then it will be too late. The answer will be simple: ccTLDs. There is a crisis of credibility for gTLDs and price increases are perhaps the worst threat to healthy gTLDs because they force the registrants of the same name in multiple TLDs to make that decision to develop or drop. ICANN screwed up badly with Domain Tasting and it kickstarted the growth in ccTLDs because ICANN didn't take action quickly enough. Over 1,000,000,000 .COM domain names were registered and deleted while ICANN wasted years debating what to do next. With the sale of .ORG, the gTLD runs the risk of genericisation and it is at risk of losing that special something that made it different from other gTLDs. The focus on secondary markets and speculation in .ORG are just distractions. As for .COM, its one year renewal rate is around 57% at the moment. It has used discounting but with the rise of the ccTLDs, the .COM is not quite as important as it was ten years ago. In most country level markets, the bulk of new registrations have shifted to the ccTLD. Price increases may, in some cases, accelerate that shift. What some people seem to miss is that an increase in the wholesale registration/renewal fee is higher by the time it gets to the registrant. Most registrants do not register domain names at the wholesale fee. Regards...jmcc -- ********************************************************** John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/ 22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO IE * Skype: hosterstats.com **********************************************************

On 05/01/2020 21:42, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On Sun, 5 Jan 2020 at 15:59, John McCormac <jmcc@hosterstats.com <mailto:jmcc@hosterstats.com>> wrote:

On 05/01/2020 17:09, Jonathan Zuck wrote: > My point, to be clear, is that these price hikes really only affect the > investor community and will, as Evan has suggested, help clear some > clutter out of the secondary market.

You and Evan are wrong. These price hikes affect all registrants of and some of them have built their presence on a TLD and cannot afford to rebrand.

As someone who owns a bunch of domains and has acquired many, many more on behalf of clients, friends and good causes, I see first-hand what's going on with these registrants and I have worked with them myself.

The .ORG was a special gTLD. It always had an element of speculation but the problem is that there is an expectation that just because someone has an idea for a domain name that they should be entitled to that domain name even if someone else has registered it first.

Evidence? Your stats are great but assertions such as "confidence" are not quite so easy to quantify.I would counter-assert that it's lack of

The Uniregistry price increases. When Unireg increased the price of their domain names, it upset registrants and managed to get all its gTLDs kicked off Godaddy. The early adopters got screwed because Uniregistry badly handled the increases. Most of the historical registrations in .BIZ are brand protection registrations but these are declining as the retail price on .BIZ is increasing and the gTLD has become less important as a main TLD.

transparency, and the inability to have enough future data upon which to plan, that causes the jitters. Domains that are expensive and thus have few registrants may be the most "reliable" and stable on the web from an end-user's PoV (registries' financial circumstances notwithstanding). Most legacy TLDs have track records that indicate incremental increases which registrants can live with. The lack of transparency, and the unawareness of what Ethos plans to do with .org, IMO contributes more to instability and lack of confidence than anything else. A pledge not to exceed 10% per year does not alleviate that.

The .ORG has the characteristics of a ccTLD in that it has a core of registrants that identify with the gTLD as being *their* TLD. That's a very unusual thing for a TLD outside some of the geoTLDs. The bad publicity from the sale has antagonised some of these registrants and unless Ethos handles it carefully, it will damage the gTLD. Hiring ex-ICANN people was not a good move in terms of optics.

So it's not their primary domain, meaning that the holders of these defensive domains are likely not NPOs.

They are defensive registrations but some of the larger businesses might eventually use the domain name for some do-good purpose.

Discounting is a far greater threat to the stability of a TLD than any secondary market. In reality, unfettered discounting destroys the credibility of a TLD.

Agreed. And they do so far more than incremental price increases that hurt portfolio owners more than those who use their domains to provide services.

Those portfolio owners can always sell. The people using the domain names are in a golden handcuffs situation which the registry can exploit. That didn't happen, to a great extent, with PIR. The other thing that may hit confidence is the TLD is a kind of snap-back of expired domain names for resale by the registry and tiered pricing.

The .ORG is one of the most stable of the legacy gTLDs.

Do you have 100% confidence that the switch to Ethos will maintain that stability? Those opposing the sale are making your point that PIR under ISOC was a great steward of .ORG, the cause of such stability, and there were better ways turn it into stable income. while maintaining that status quo.

I am not sure. The optics on the deal are terrible and the connection between former ICANN people and Ethos make it worse. Ethos has a lot of hard work to do to regain the trust of the true believers in .ORG. If it loses them, it loses the gTLD and becomes completely dependent on the existing registrants. Most of them will renew but the danger is that in the long term, .ORG becomes another .MOBI.

The strange idea that the secondary market is some big, bad ogre devouring all the domain names in a TLD is wrong. The reality is quite different.

As someone who has worked for decades with entrepreneurs and nonprofits who struggle to find suitable domain names that aren't taken up by squatters, I will challenge that assertion of reality.

The secondary market in most TLDs is far smaller than people expect. The problem with coming up with a good domain name is that people tend to think in purely generic terms when purely generic terms are long gone in TLDs that have been around for over thirty years.

Not so much in .ORG, but in .COM the availability of original-release domains is pretty sparse unless you create your own coined word or resort to dashes in the name. But I'm struggling to find the point of this debate. The subject line says it's about .COM. If you want to argue against sudden and non-incremental price increases and other destabilizing forces in .ORG, I'm all with you. I detest domainers but agree that their impact on .ORG is far less than .COM. So what are we arguing about?

The .COM is actually in a more fragile position than .ORG. It may not look like it but .ORG still has a unique function in that it is the NGO/do-gooder gTLD. What's happening at a global level is that there has been a shift towards ccTLDs happening for the last fifteen years and the registrations in .COM in these countries have been declining. The .COM is lucky to be the de facto ccTLD of the USA and it accounts for the bulk of the registrations. Where the ccTLD is the dominant TLD in a country level market, the more redirects from .COM will go to the ccTLD website than the other way. The registrant's brand has become largely integrated with the ccTLD and the bulk of the registrations in .COM are historical. The volume of new registrations is mainly ccTLD. A price increase in .COM will accelerate that because the .COM, a global TLD, may not be necessary for local business. What actually happens with ccTLDs is that the number of unique registrations that only exist in the ccTLD and not in any gTLD increases. Verisign has been using discounting promotions over the years to drive registration volumes but some of these promotions, particularly with Chinese registrars, have very low renewal rates. Because of the huge volume of historical registrations and renewals, these non-renewals disappear in the ebb and flow of registrations. The market, other than the stable US and EU markets, for new .COM registrations is highly dependent on markets where the local ccTLD is not as strong. The big problem with that is that ICANN's registrar model is too expensive for hosters in these countries to make the jump to becoming fully accredited ICANN registrars. Some countries such as Brazil with 4 million ccTLD registrations have no ICANN accredited registrars. Many countries in Africa have no ICANN registrars. Regards...jmcc -- ********************************************************** John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/ 22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO IE * Skype: hosterstats.com **********************************************************

Yeah, I'm not sure how ORG came up on this thread. There are plenty of issues with ORG that don't apply to COM and we should continue to pursue those Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org<http://www.Innovatorsnetwork.org> ________________________________ From: Roberto Gaetano <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> Sent: Sunday, January 5, 2020 4:26:53 PM To: Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net>; Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> Cc: CPWG <cpwg@icann.org> Subject: Re: [CPWG] The crux of the COM issue I have a few comments on this. First of all, maybe off-topic, but happy new year anyway. My second comment is that we may be focusing too much to financial aspects and financial strategy, and take the risk of missing the point of what really was (or maybe still could be) .org. Incidentally, even from a financial point of view I have serious issues with the black or white alternatives suggested by the author. My third, and to my personal opinion more important comment, is that we need to find out a way where we can influence the future behaviour of Public Interest Registry rather than fight the transfer of ownership. I have already provided some comments of mine on this list, but it is maybe time to come with more focused suggestions, based on these guidelines: * to ICANN, was the redelegation of .org to a non-profit a historic move that changed the marketplace and one of the great successes of ICANN (I would even go as far as saying “one of the reasons for ICANN to exist”)? If so, notwithstanding the obvious difficulties - including the risk of a gigantic lawsuit - is there room for ensuring, if not the form of non-profit, at least the commitment to an ethical behaviour built in the ICANN-PIR/Ethos contract? * to PIR/Ethos, what are the ways in which the non-profit (I would say the at-large user community) can influence the decisions about .org (but also .ngo/.ong and the .og IDNs) and the future decisions about presence in the domain name market? PIR had an Advisory Council - how can that evolve? PIR Board members were selected by a reputed non-profit like ISOC - how is the presence of the voice of the users guaranteed on the PIR Board? The latter issue is quite urgent, terms for 2 PIR Board members come to an end in few months. * to ISOC - but I believe that this should be a matter for ISOC Chapters rather than for the whole community - how does its presence in matters related to domain name policy change after the transfer of PIR? Assuming that the money that will come from the PIR sale will be invested, who has any influence in ensuring that the investment are done in the best interest of the Internet community? My worry is that we lose momentum in initiatives that are not focused enough. While now we can put pressures, in a few months we will be irrelevant. Cheers, Roberto On 05.01.2020, at 16:43, Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net<mailto:mmoll@ca.inter.net>> wrote: Milton Mueller suggested that angle quite awhile ago and I think it forms part of their letter to ICANN re: this issue. It is one of the contractual things that is actually within ICANN's purview and, from what I have read, would not be very appealing to a for profit private equity firm -- seriously limits their options. Marita On 1/4/2020 10:40 PM, Jonathan Zuck wrote: https://www.kickstartcommerce.com/about-that-10-year-renewal-strategy-for-co... Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org<http://www.innovatorsnetwork.org/> _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.