Will .Com Domain Name Fees Soar?
Thursday, November 13th, 2008
Hidden bomb in new gTLD agreement could introduce tiered pricing to .com domains.
Upset about VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) increasing your .com registration fees 7% a year? Imagine if they could raise them by whatever they want.
There’s a little time bomb in the new draft gTLD registry agreement, part of the new top level domain rollout process, that could make this happen.
Essentially, the new registry agreement wouldn’t place any pricing restrictions on registries as they introduce new domains, such as .cars. They can price them however they want, including variable pricing as is done for the .tv country code. This can apply to new registrations or renewals. (For example, for .tv you’ll currently pay a higher registration and renewal fee for money.tv than somelamekeyword.tv.) The only requirement is that these prices be made transparent.
ICANN considered removing pricing caps for domains such as .biz and .info back in 2006, but the community helped persuade it otherwise.
“Big deal,” you say. You don’t plan to register any of these new domains.
That’s where the hidden bomb comes in. There’s an “equal treatment” clause in registry agreements that states essentially one registry won’t get something that another registry doesn’t get. In other words, if the draft new gTLD and registry agreement aren’t changed, then VeriSign could argue that it shouldn’t have price restrictions anymore. You could end up getting hit with a $10,000 renewal fee for your prized domains.
Corporations should care about this, too, since they rely on their domain names for commerce and e-mail. Imagine if VeriSign suddenly wanted to charge AT&T $1 billion a year to renew att.com.
I don’t have a problem with pricing for new domain registrations going up. But renewals should be grandfathered or capped.
In order to stop this from happening, it’s important that you comment on the drafts. You can comment on this particular section of the draft by sending an e-mail to gtld-transition [at] icann.org. You can read current comments here.
Lets hope they dont get away this.
RegFee’s on some domains ext are already expensive.
Regards,
Robbie
Founder
RegFeeNames.com
When has Icann really cared about the stakeholders?
They only want 2 things.
More money.
No accountability to the U.S. Govt.
I’m sure if Verisign is granted the ability to charge whatever they want for a domain, Icann will want a piece of the pie.
“I don’t have a problem with pricing for new domain registrations going up. But renewals should be grandfathered or capped.”
Couldn’t agree with you more. Honestly, I hope there are significant price increases for new .com registrations. There is so much junk out there right now that the number of legitimate websites is dwarfed by the number of names held, tasted, undeveloped, or parked.
At the same time, a significant price increase to .com would hurt their reseller value: more small-time sites would choose a less costly extension (one of the new vTLDs, perhaps) over .com. More people would become familiar with the new extension.
I’m in favor of a “tiered” system for new extensions. If Lemonade.com, for example, is held by a domainer and parked, they’ll have less incentive to sitting on the name if renewal costs were much higher. Naturally, the name would be either sold to a company that would actually have a use for the name. It works for dot TV.
The domaining industry needs to change significantly for it to be good for the Web as a whole. There needs to be a bigger number of useful, developed sites instead of those held by domainers.
I do have a big problem with new regs going up.
The Net is supposed to be the great, level playing field. If prices are raised than it becomes a rich person’s game and the small guy can’t compete. It becomes a barrier for small business entry.
What about TM domains? Will the registrar be able to hold those at ransom? “Oh….you have a trademark on this keyword domain. Ok…then it is $20,000 to secure your rights”. That is bullsh*t.
Besides it only costs $2 to administer each domain who is ripping off who?
I’m burning mad about this. It can’t be allowed to pass or many of will be out of business.
I smell an antitrust coming.
Johnny - if you’re burning mad, PLEASE take the time to send a message to the email address in the story. ICANN monitors issues like this and considers how many people bring up the issue.
[...] Will .Com Domain Name Fees Soar? Upset about VeriSign increasing your .com registration fees 7% a year? Imagine if they could raise them by whatever they want. There’s a little time bomb in the new draft gTLD registry agreement, part of the new top level domain rollout process, that could make this happen. Essentially, the new registry agreement wouldn’t place any pricing restrictions on registries as they introduce new domains, such as .cars. They can price them however they want, including variable pricing as is done for the .tv country code. This can apply to new registrations or renewals. (For example, for .tv you’ll currently pay a higher registration and renewal fee for money.tv than somelamekeyword.tv.) The only requirement is that these prices be made transparent. More… [...]
Final nail to this coffin.
[...] written before on Domain Name Wire along with several other domain news sites, the new agreement includes a ticking time bomb that [...]