PIR and ICANN offering more opportunities to provide feedback.
People with opinions on Ethos Capital’s planned takeover of Public Interest Registry (PIR), the group that operates the .org top level domain name, have two upcoming opportunities to be heard.
First, PIR has opened a brief public engagement about the proposed sale. It’s asking for people in the “.ORG Community” to provide feedback on the voluntary (but, apparently, legally binding) plan to restrict pricing and controls over freedom of expression.
PIR will then provide a summary report of the feedback. Notably, it will also publish all of the comments it received. The comments won’t be available during the period like ICANN provides during its comment periods, but this means PIR won’t be able to merely cherry pick comments that it likes.
But the window is limited—comments will be accepted until March 13.
Second, ICANN announced that it will allocate time for community discussion about .org during ICANN67. The conference, which was originally slated for Cancun, is now an online-only event due to the novel coronavirus.
ICANN’s notice states:
This is an opportunity for the ICANN community to ensure that it understands the scope of ICANN’s role in this matter, and to provide feedback. Please note that the Board and the ICANN org cannot address questions and comments that relate to the ISOC, PIR, Ethos Capital, or other parties involved in the proposed transfer.
It will be interesting to see how ICANN defines its role in the matter.
How are consumers protected beyond 8 years? Ethos Capital has agreed not to raise prices by more than 10% per year. But for only eight (8) years from the effective date of June 30, 2019.
Why only 8 years? Why not make this forever?
What plans does Ethos have after 8 years?
Furthermore, 10% yearly price increases are supracompetitive. There is absolutely nothing in place to discipline pricing – preventing Ethos Capital from charging the maximum amount possible.
PIR has not increased prices for many years in a row. So the new operator (Ethos Capital) will be pricing its services entirely different going forward.
Now – we are about to witness price hikes each and every single year – because ICANN is not doing its job. If this transaction is allowed to go though, Ethos Capital has a duty/obligation to their shareholders to increase prices to the maximum extent possible and to service their debt, pay taxes, and provide a strong ROI for investors.
Consumers are not able to switch domain names. They are locked-in and have no alternatives. Domain names are highly inelastic. Thus, consumers will be forced to spend whatever amount the monopoly operator charges.
Thus, in 8 years, ICANN will be in the same exact situation as today – but the registration and renewal prices on .org domains will be $21.25
Thus, ICANN’s actions (or in actions) will allow a monopoly operator the ability to increase its prices from $9.93 to $21.25 over the next 8 years. And allow Ethos Capital to charge whatever amount it desires thereafter.
Unbelievable.
The ICANN board should pay close attention and listen to what the Founding CEO and Director of ICANN (Mike Roberts) recently said on February 21, 2020. Mike Roberts is also the founding Trustee and Director of ISOC.
Mike Roberts said:
“The chartering goals include “promote competition.” As everyone knows, ICANN has actually been handing out monopoly licenses with no price constraints on the dubious theory that many monopolies will promote lower prices and provide the benefits of competition to the Internet community. That hasn’t happened, so what to do?”
ICANN has gotten its entire competition mandate wrong. ICANN believes having many monopolies will promote lower prices in each respective TLD. But this has not happened because domain names are not substitutes.
In fact, we are witnessing exactly the opposite situation. The two largest legacy TLD’s (.com and .org) are pushing ICANN to allow for price increase on its captive base of customers. At a time when the cost to operate both registries have declined.
Indeed, if there is more competition in the DNS with the launch of the new gTLD’s – then Verisign (.com) and PIR (.org) would want to LOWER prices to COMPETE in the market. However, exactly opposite is happening. Verisign will soon have the ability (once ICANN ignores almost 100% unanimous opposition from 9,000 comments to Amendment 3 to the .com Registry Agreement) to increase its prices by 31% over the next four years through 2024. Despite the fact that ICANN already had Verisign contractually obligated to maintain prices at $7.85 through 2024. Thus, ICANN is walking back on its binding pricing arrangement through 2024 with Verisign – and will now allow Verisign to increase prices starting in October of this year – on 144 million consumers – without any justification.
And Ethos Capital/ PIR will have the ability to increase its prices from $9.93 to $21.25 over the next 8 years – and have absolutely no pricing cap thereafter.
Why would they need to increase prices? This should get cheaper as time, and technology carry forward, if anything we should be talking about how much cheaper they are going to make it in the face of 1000 random .extensions
If the people behind this deal are offering promises then everyone should stop being so concerned and go home.
Legacy TLDs are a *public trust*. They are not owned, not even by ICANN. Only God owns them just as He owns this entire universe and everything in it and of it.
And this article is required reading:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20181112_verisigns_attempt_to_increase_fees_unjustified_despite/
This is where PIR lobbyists try to create their own supporting data. This company is no longer fit to run the registry and ICANN should look for a genuine not for profit provider.
“.ORG Isn’t Broken, and We Don’t Need Private Equity to ‘Fix’ It”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/org-isnt-broken-and-we-dont-need-private-equity-fix-it