Do domain name owners care if VeriSign can drastically increase .com prices? Apparently not.

ICANN has released new details about its proposed registry agreement and added a line-by-line comparison to previous registry agreements. These agreements dictate the terms that registries such as VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) must follow as they run top level domains. You can see details of the new information on ICANN’s web site.

As written before on Domain Name Wire along with several other domain news sites, the new agreement includes a ticking time bomb that could lead to drastically higher wholesale prices for .com domain registrations. Essentially the new agreements would not include pricing controls and instead just require registries to list their fees transparently online. This could be applied to existing registry agreements, such as the one VeriSign has to manage .com and .net.

What does this mean for you? When it comes time to renew one of your prized domains, you could see a renewal fee of $1,000, $10,000, or more.

As George Kirikos and others alerted domainers about this problem, I assumed people would take action. After all, all you have to do to comment on the proposed registry agreement is to send a simple email to gtld-transition [at] icann.org.

In the past month, fewer than 20 people have posted a comment about this issue in the module 5 comments on ICANN’s web site. Frank Schilling took the time out of his day to write a well thought out opposition to the changes. A handful have also posted comments to the main comments section on ICANN.

But not many other people have done so. It’s shocking that so few people have commented, and can lead me to only one conclusion: domain owners don’t care. It amazes me that people spend so much time complaining about 7% annual .com price hikes but won’t spend five minutes to express opposition to potential 7000% price hikes.

Am I wrong? Prove it to me by posting a thoughtful comment on ICANN’s web site today. Again, all you have to do is send an email with your comment to gtld-transition [at] icann.org.

The deadline for commenting has been extended to December 15, 2008.

Latest VeriSign report blames Google Adsense weakness for slowing domain registration growth rates.

New domain name registrations are slowing, and VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) says Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) may be to blame.

About 11.5 million new domain names were registered in the third quarter of this year, VeriSign reported in this month’s Domain Name Industry Brief (pdf). That’s a 2% decline from the previous quarter as well as over Q3 of 2007. When you look only at .com and .net domains, new registrations are down even more. The 6.9 million .com and .net domains registered in the third quarter were down 9% compared to the second quarter of this year.

VeriSign predicts that the total base of .com and .net domains will increase only 1 or 2 million in the fourth quarter after accounting for expired domain registrations.

What’s to blame? VeriSign cites changes in Google’s Adsense for Domains program as well as general internet advertising weakness:

The number of new .com and .net domain names registered with the intent of generating online advertising revenue saw pronounced weakness again in third quarter due in part to changes in Google’s Ad-Sense program and lower spending trends in Internet advertising. As some US-based registrars forecast that economic conditions may contribute to lower than expected growth rates in the coming quarter, coupled with continued weakness in online advertising, the base of .com and .net domain names is estimated to increase one to two million domain names in the fourth quarter.

Renewal rates for .com/.net dropped to 72% from a historical average in the mid 70% range.

VeriSign’s report also shows that Germany’s .de domain name is no longer the top dog of ccTLDs. China’s .cn has replaced it, thanks in part to cut rate pricing.

The report includes an update on .tv. It’s essentially an advertisement; VeriSign has a financial stake in .tv domains.

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.

Moving domain names out of the United States may not be safer.

Last week I wrote about a growing movement for transferring domain names away from United States registrars to other countries. I argued that:

-Even if you move your domains to a non-U.S. registrar, U.S. courts could still claim jurisdiction through Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) or ICANN
-Other countries also make silly decisions that could jeopardize your domains

I gave the suggestion of an Australian court making a rash decision, to which one commentor replied “Let’s be honest here. The US courts make stupid decisions all the time. Much more frequently than other first world courts do.”

Well, what about the non-judicial branch of countries? It turns out you should be fearful, as Australia’s federal government wants to implement a nationwide firewall to block what it deems to be “inappropriate” or “illegal” content. GigaOm points out that Australia is not the only country with similar plans.

What’s surprising here is that this isn’t some oppressive regime like that of China or North Korea. And it goes to show that other countries want to control the internet, too. (Note: If you are in China and can read this post, please e-mail me to let me know it’s not blocked.)

Moves like this make me even more wary of policies for new TLDs, including ICANN’s consideration of “Morality and Public Order Objection Considerations in New gTLDs”.

As one commentor pointed out in response to the “Morality” issue, we don’t censor what domains you can register on current TLDs (country code domains are a different matter). Why censor top level domains?

Looming price hike means it’s time to renew your domain names.

Over the past few days I’ve renewed thousands of dollars worth of domain names. The price of renewing most domain names will shoot up on October 1 as many of the registries increase prices. That includes VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN), which runs .com and .net. Registrars will pass these price hikes to customers.

Last time before prices increased I renewed domains a couple months out. This time, thanks to aggressive pre-price-hike pricing by Moniker , I’ve already renewed through May of next year. Moniker is offering $7.29 .com renewals to everyone, which is lower than even the best advertised tier of pricing at the company.

It just makes sense to renew now rather than in 6 months. Sure, some of my domains will sell and I will have renewed them early for no reason. But that won’t make up more than a couple percent of the domains I’ve renewed.

One thing I am doing differently this year is deciding if I should let some of my domains expire. Many of them were expired domains that I bought many years ago and have lost all of their backlink traffic. If they have any PageRank I’ll renew them; if not I’ll check out my stats on them for the last year to make sure they pay for the registration. So far I’ve decided to let about 2% of my domains expire.

Regardless of which registrar you use, I recommend taking a hard look at your portfolio and renewing in advance of the price increase.