Important: Tiered Pricing Battle Again At ICANN

[Theo]

Christmas of 2009 - under the new open pricing.

Think outside the box. Suppose I want to own Acro.net. I call up VeriSign, and tell them I'll pay $300/yr to get it. They then jack up the price on you. If you don't want to renew it, they've got a buyer in hand for it. Can you afford to outbid every other person on earth for the domains you already own? And even if you could, would you want to pay that for the privilege of renewal?

If I think outside the box, I will be foreseeing a lot of palm-oiling, corruption and an onslaught of lawsuits - personally against each member of the ICANN committee.

 

[sprewellpj]

I sent the email to [email protected] as you suggested, thanks.

 

[Gregcyber]

Love Wins

 

[carlton]

Couple more observations. With the profound dissent voiced two years ago regarding biz/info/org contracts, it is beyond alarming that ICANN are back again repeating the same mistake with the com/net Verisign contract. Something stinks of extreme corruption.

They didn't do us a favor two years ago. They chose the only legitimate course of action that any competent, fair-minded regulatory body could make. As George points out, the same irrefutable logic that steered their decision two years ago ... stands now. What disturbs me is that ANYONE in ICANN would allow this ridiculous contract error to even get past the first draft. Something stinks of extreme corruption.

The problem is that the absence of price control language in the contract effectively FAILS to offer you the necessary protections that will keep Verisign from jacking up your domain renewals. On one hand, reasonable-minded might think "Oh this is an over-reaction and Verisign would never jack up renewal prices or adopt tiered-pricing". However, if you have been around for several years, then you will have learned that abuse and exploitation often occur (they are almost the norm in the domain industry) ... unless specifically prohibited. Ask yourself this: "Can I trust Verisign to treat me fairly and protect my com/net domain investments?" Don't be naive.

Carefully written contract language is the only thing that will safeguard you as a domain registrant and/or internet business owner. I don't presume to know how people should feel, but the inevitable conclusion is that you will be violently angry, and financially strapped, when Verisign and ICANN's choices result in an email to your inbox which informs you of a "new pricing system" that will apply to your upcoming renewals. Some convoluted bullsh*t like "market analysis and increased operating costs have required us to raise your renewal in accordance with ...... (fill in the blank with smoke and mirrors)"

Bottom line: "Verisign may take advantage of a poorly written contract, and ICANN will have failed to prevent it." These are all my opinions, obviously, but my concern is that domainers be able to protect their interests before it's too late.

Please post on the ICANN comments forum and write ICANN members individually to demand price protection and the prohibition of tiered-pricing.

 

[Theo]

Can we have a list of all the ICANN panelist members?

 

[GeorgeK]

I would not mind a tax on earned revenue from a domain...say 4% plus the renew fees of $10.00
A tax would be better then paying renewal fees of $100.00 + to renew a dumb domain name you work hard to promote.

Speak for yourself, as I'm certain 99.99% of folks would mind an extra 4% in taxes. Most folks already pay a large amount in taxes, and don't need any more.

Plus, if you don't mind paying 4% taxes, nothing is stopping you from volunteering 4% of your income to ICANN or VeriSign. Go right ahead. I'm not about to fund more ICANN travel junkets, or executive pay increases:

http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga-200709/msg02021.html

or prop up VeriSign shareholders who are already making a killing (under a competitive tender process like most government contracts, .com fees would be $2/yr, not nearly $7 and rising).

Can we have a list of all the ICANN panelist members?

http://www.icann.org/en/general/board.html

is the list of all current Board members.

 

[cursal]

This is an Outrage! Again!

The amount of domains that would get caught by this is not only hard to measure, but appear as the first stages of reclaiming a large amount names back to Verisign/ICANN.
These names won't drop or get deleted, not until they pick through what they want.

Then watch them say, oh yeah this isn't such a good idea, and reset the values again so people can buy names /lease names and go on much like as we are now.

The yearly increase they have right now is fine.

They need to be saved from themselves?
rather
They need to be stopped before they wreck it for many business and possible some entire industries.

 

[GeorgeK]

Couple more observations. With the profound dissent voiced two years ago regarding biz/info/org contracts, it is beyond alarming that ICANN are back again repeating the same mistake with the com/net Verisign contract. Something stinks of extreme corruption.

They didn't do us a favor two years ago. They chose the only legitimate course of action that any competent, fair-minded regulatory body could make. As George points out, the same irrefutable logic that steered their decision two years ago ... stands now. What disturbs me is that ANYONE in ICANN would allow this ridiculous contract error to even get past the first draft. Something stinks of extreme corruption.

The problem is that the absence of price control language in the contract effectively FAILS to offer you the necessary protections that will keep Verisign from jacking up your domain renewals.

Indeed, what was so sneaky about this, both last time, and this time, is that there's no language in the contract that says "ICANN approves a registry operator engaging in tiered pricing." What they slyly did was simply remove the old language that had the pricing caps. It's an act of "omission."

If you didn't know:

a) what to look for in the first place, i.e. that the pricing cap section was missing, and

b) that you had to look at terms in OTHER contracts (i.e. the .com equal treatment clauses)

then it would have been easy to miss the implications. ICANN and registry operators probably count on this -- it's clear registrants weren't part of the team drafting these bad contracts.

Once you remove pricing caps in one gTLDs, then you have to remove them in other gTLDs that ask for equal treatment, unless you can demonstrate a good reason (right now some sponsored gTLDs, which have a defined community overseeing it, like .aero or .coop or .travel have no pricing controls, but the "good reason" that one can use if .com/net/org/biz/info try to get the same for themselves is that they are unsponsored gTLDs, open to anyone, and thus can't be considered the same for the equal treatment clause to be triggered).

Then, once you've removed them in .com, one quickly asks "How would one make the most money with pricing unregulated?" Tiered pricing is the obvious solution.

If ICANN had simply said "We want VeriSign to introduce .tv style pricing for .com" on their homepage, they would have seen a huge outcry. But, through (a) and (b) above, they've said the exact same thing. It's like they wrote it in the Achumawi language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achumawi_language

which has only 8 people in the world who understand it. That's typical ICANN "transparency", to say exactly what you're getting, but formulate it in such a way that you need to be able to read Achumawi to understand it!

 

[DNWizardX9]

This is ridiculous... if you check out slickdeals.com etc they are pretty much giving away computer parts for free nowadays.....

(put together more servers etc)...
all expenses have gone down

 

[GeorgeK]

There was some additional coverage at:

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2008/dailyposts/11-12-08.htm
http://domainnamewire.com/2008/11/13/will-com-domain-name-fees-soar/

It would be nice to see some additional comments in the ICANN comment forums at:

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-comments-en.htm

(widen your browser to see the comment email addresses and archives of existing comments; either the [email protected] address (for the Full Draft Applicant Guidebook) or the [email protected] address (for Module 5) are appropriate, or both as I did))

The "Executive Summary" is:

1) The equal treatment clauses of existing gTLD registry contracts permits the registry operators to cherry pick terms from other gTLD contracts (e.g. if .info gets something, then VeriSign is entitled to the same for .com, unless there's a good reason otherwise for the disparate treatment).

2) The new gTLD contracts remove all price controls.

3) Put #1 and #2 together. VeriSign and other gTLD operators could remove all price controls. Without price controls, what's the way to maximize profits for the registry operator, at the expense of registrants? Obviously tiered pricing.

4) This is exactly the same as 2006, when .biz/info/org tried to remove pricing controls from their contracts. Go back to:

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-28jul06.htm

and see the exact language:

Lifting of Price Controls on Registry Services. Following extensive consideration and discussion, each of the proposed new .BIZ, .INFO and .ORG registry agreements provide for the lifting of price controls formerly imposed on the pricing of registry services.

It's the identical battle as before. For ICANN to re-open this issue is simply reckless disregard for registrants. If you were outraged in 2006, you should be doubly outraged today that they're pulling such a stunt again, after losing last time. So, take a moment and post a comment!

 

[Gerry]

Once the first new gTLD signs a contract that has no price controls, which could be as early as next year. Existing registrars would then ask for a contract revision, which ICANN would be in no position to deny.

I warned about this very thing almost 2 years ago, on this forum and others. There was a big push to get .nyc petition going. At the time, the preliminary designated acronym was gcTLD - Global City TLD.

I contacted, in an open letter, the organizer of this effort regarding the rationale. I was responded to. They drew the analogy with the years gone by effort to get .ber for Berlin. However, the City Government of Berlin threatened lawsuit for violated its institution.

Those two forces -.nyc and .ber - had now joined together.

But here is the amusing and pathetic part; the petitioners of the .nyc effort were also going to be the registrar. And their audience that they were presenting this to? Immigrants. That's right, immigrants to New York City who had dreams of opening business but, gee golly, all the good domains were already taken. That was the organizers sales pitch, this was their audience, and now we know their goal.

All one has to do is look not too far back at the .travel domain. Miraculously, the best domains and premiums were already registered as soon as they went live. Why? The person running the registry had his daughter and son-in-law establish another company and all those choice domains were then given to them. Through sales and promo of these premiere picks, the made countless millions.

Legitimately, several companies have already gotten into the act with this new gTLD. Most notably eBay. For their benefit and from their standpoint, this would be solely to the benefit of entrenced branding and the domains would be tightly controlled and for the use of ebay only.

The same with Coke.

I have had serious doubts about ICANN for years and have expressed these openly. The "NO BID" awarding of the .com and .net registries to Verisign, the immediate announcement of Verisign of a 7% increase, the RegFly debacle that documents clearly show that ICANN was aware of their cash flow issues for more than a year, impending lawsuits against ICANN, and ICANN fleeing to establish their headquarters to Switzerland to escape litigation and taxes.

That sums up ICANN'ts effectiveness.

With more than 260 tld's in effect at present, the soon to be released of IDN's and now the gTLD's where it will be a free for all to become your own registrar, the internet will fast approach doubling, tripling, and quadrupling that number within a few years.

Talk about a crowded place.

 

[keyser]

And if they were smart (and there's no reason to assume they are dumb), they would partner with Yahoo and Google, and pull out your historical domain name parking stats (and pay Yahoo/Google a license fee for the data). They would know exactly how much your parked names make, or how much they earn from AdSense, etc. They could probably partner with credit bureaus, payment processors, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, D&B, PayPal, etc. to find out how much your company makes in its ecommerce.

Thanks for warning us George. Appreciated.

In this case, registrars (do I hear .com monopoly ?) must be prepared to a harmful lawsuit.
I dont know much about the US legal system, but quite sure you can find the same kind of rules as here in the EC that covers the following :

- First, agreements between two or more firms which restrict competition are prohibited by Article 81 of the Treaty, subject to some limited exceptions. This provision covers a wide variety of behaviours. The most obvious example of illegal conduct infringing Article 81 is a cartel between competitors (which may involve price-fixing or market sharing) ;

- Second, firms in a dominant position may not abuse that position (Article 82 of the EC Treaty).

The Commission is empowered by the Treaty to apply these prohibition rules and enjoys a number of investigative powers to that end (e.g. inspection in business and non business premises, written requests for information, etc). It may also impose fines on undertakings who violate EU antitrust rules. Since 1 May 2004, all national competition authorities are also empowered to apply fully the provisions of the Treaty in order to ensure that competition is not distorted or restricted. National courts may also apply these prohibitions so as to protect the individual rights conferred to citizens by the Treaty.

Source :
http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/overview_en.html

Might be interesting :yes:

 

[clasione]

Sent in an email..... Hopefully the voices of domain owners will be heard and considered.

 

[DNWizardX9]

Sent in an email..... Hopefully the voices of domain owners will be heard and considered.

If we were heard and considered then the whole contract would be put on the market to get us $2 regs..........

 

[Rubber Duck]

I would not mind a tax on earned revenue from a domain...say 4% plus the renew fees of $10.00
A tax would be better then paying renewal fees of $100.00 + to renew a dumb domain name you work hard to promote.

You are rather running with the assumption that the rest of the World is going to roll over and have its tummy tickled as the US declares sovereignty over the Internet.

What you would actually end up with is an Internet that won't work anywhere outside the US. Another Iron Curtain only this time you'll end up on the wrong side of it.

 

[DaddyHalbucks]

George,

Thanks for calling this to our attention, you are definitely one of the "good guys" in this business.

 

[DNWizardX9]

The point to Gregcyber is that nobody deserves a penny of what we make from our sites.... why should ICANN/Verisign be allowed a heaping serving of our profits? (basing it on metrics etc) yet any at all?
makes no sense

 

[Fatbat]

ICANN is supposed to be a not for profit corporation. I've always been interested in how this works exactly?

 

[Gregcyber]

Love Wins

 

[DaddyHalbucks]

Where do the big ecommerce companies stand on this issue --eBay, Amazon, Overstock, Expedia, Google, Walmart, Buy.com, etc..?

?