Friday deadline to weigh in on new .com contract terms.
People opposed to ICANN’s plan to allow Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) to raise prices on .com domains have until Friday, February 14, to submit a comment to ICANN.
The proposed Amendment #3 to ICANN’s contract with Verisign to run .com will allow Verisign to increase prices 7% per year in the last four years of each six-year renewal period. The current wholesale price of a .com domain is $7.85. Verisign is paying ICANN $20 million over five years as part of the deal.
Comments can be made by sending an email to comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20 @ icann.org.
Internet Commerce Association, an advocacy group representing domain name owners, has created a form to make it easier to submit comments. The form allows you to select reasons you are opposed/in favor of the contract amendment, but comments might be given more weight if people add personalized feedback on the plan.
Several domain name registrars, including Namecheap, Dynadot and NameBright, have emailed their customers asking them to submit comments.
Why is GoDaddy not sending an email to all its customers ?
Valid point. GoDaddy has as much skin in the game as anyone being the largest registrar and a large portfolio owner themselves; even larger now with the Frank Schilling portfolio acquisition.
Other registrars have stepped up on this issue.
However, I am starting to get rather annoyed with GoDaddy’s complete lack of taking a stance when it comes to registrant right issues. I have thousands of domains there, and I generally happy with them, but the lack of stance on this is disturbing to me.
Brad
Dear ICANN:
I am owner of over 700 domains, mostly .COM and I am against the proposed price increase to .COM domains.
The current rate of $7.85 is already far more than justified due to the fact that technology and services should decrease in value over time and not increase. Only products and services that rely heavily on “raw materials” to produce or operate should have an increase comparable to the cost of those materials or equivalent to the inflation rate.
Verisign is merely your manager of the .COM Registry – it has no business dictating the price, and no justification in increasing the price.
Brent Alan Brashear, Director of AlanBuilt
Belle Plaine, KS
Aman Bhutani and Paul Nicks, where are you ???
Your company will be the most affected when renewal time comes at a much inflated price and your customer support is assaulted by angry customers wanting to know why their fee increases 7% 4 years in a row !
Things to highlight, folks:
1. Legacy TLDs are a *public trust*. They are not “owned” by anyone or anything, not even ICANN.
2. As has been so well pointed out by others before, there is no justification for continual price increases, and if there was any concern about maximizing value for the world, competitive bidding for managing .com would already have resulted in FAR lower prices to begin with.
3. Ergo, .com is not supposed to be treated like a license to print money for greedy corporations at the expense of the entire world.
4. And this one most “domainers” can’t relate to, but it’s true:
Having and using *many* domains is NOT just what “domainers” do. It is also the legitimate business model of end users who do things that way, as well as even just for business-necessary defensive registration. It’s certainly what I do as an end user first by a mile, domain investor/occasional seller only second. A distant second in fact.
5. Regardless of #4 even: the price of even 1 single domain makes a difference to the world in terms of equality and affordability of opportunity. It can either be conducive to or DISINCENTIVISE the very kind of innovation and societal benefit that exists in the world through publishing and entrepreneurship. The idea that “a business owner won’t care about going from $15 to $30” and remarks to that affect are nothing but nonsense with regard to the big picture. It’s not just about people who already are in business or are publishing.
I think that everything we are doing now is a waste of time, we have been believing that everything would remain the same and now everything is in a hurry.
It all started in 1998 and after the 1999 bubble, the bases were created like any pharmaceutical laboratory with the medical experts of its specialty to create diseases and medications, vaccine research is the latest.
We have arrived late and we can not get vaccinated. It has expired a long time ago and this was beautiful but we never cared like this is the truth of how clear the water and the Iranian beluga caviar in Verisign, ICANN…..
You have to remember that Icann is located in Los Angeles, California. They probably think like the California gov’t, keep raising taxes (prices) and give less and less back to the person paying the increase.
We have (should have) learned that Icann wants the appearance of feed back but they are going to do whatever they want. They even ignore the U.S. Commerce Dept and U.S. legislators which have oversight over Icann’s policy.
Icann should make their logo – “the middle finger”.
GoDaddy sent an email about .com price hikes….and it seems it is for only certain people…
https://domaininvesting.com/godaddy-let-your-voice-be-heard/
they are late to ask…may be they realised how much they need to pay for additional 350k domains from Uni acquisition… 😉
or they read comments here and sent the email.
We should all move to a decentralized DNS system like Handshake.