.com prices could double

[wot]

Hi everyone,

I am writing this letter to all of you personally because it is time for all of you to stand up for a cause. Some of you might be aware that ICANN and Verisign recently announced a proposed settlement of their pending litigation (Verisign had sued ICANN a few years ago and that lawsuit is pending). We believe this settlement is unfair, unjust, inappropriate and would be blasphemous to the Internet community and to your Business.

Some Highlights of the settlement


The settlement agreement allows Verisign to increase the price of .com domain names to every Registrar by 7% every year. Currently Verisign charges all Registrars $6 for every domain name. The new settlement agreement however allows them to increase prices to all of us without any cost justification. They can simply increase the price by 7% EACH year.


This means they could double the price in 10 years. Naturally any increase in price would mean all Registrars would have to increase their prices to you. This would reduce your sales and reduce your potential to sell other Products.


In this settlement proposal ICANN is giving Verisign the chance to make more than 2 Billion Dollars extra over the next 10 years. This may by far be the most expensive settlement proposal the world has witnessed.


This 2 Billion Dollars is coming out of your / your customers pockets.


The new settlement agreement also doubles the ICANN fees charged to Registrars. Currently Registrars pay 25 cents per domain name to ICANN. The new agreement will make that 50 cents. This again means all Registrars will further increase what they charge all of you for dotCom Domain Names.


The new settlement agreement has a perpetual presumptive renewal clause. This means that Verisign will permanently hold on to the dotCom Registry. There will never be any competitive bid for it, except in a very remote circumstance. Verisign now gets the right to a perpetual monopoly. This means that they are free to do whatever they want with dotCom, without fear of competition. Prices therefore will never reduce.



The entire settlement documents are posted online at http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/settlement-agreements.htm

The part with regards to pricing is in Section 7.3 of http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/com-registry-agreement-22sep05.pdf

What can you do?

This settlement agreement will be signed very soon unless the ICANN Board is convinced otherwise. You all represent the voice of the various Domain Name Consumers worldwide. All of you should send your comments about this settlement and how it will affect your business.

Send your comments to [email protected]

Keep the following points in mind before sending your comments:


Put in your company name, and specify how long you have been in business, and how you represent the voices of hundreds and thousands of Customers in your specific region.


You may specify how any increase in the dotCom domain name prices will affect your business.


Readup existing comments by other people at http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/. Your comments can be similar to the ones already posted. More number of comments about the same issue from different people across different countries would clearly show that everyone is concerned about the same issue.



Feel free also to forward this email to your Customers and Resellers and urge them to individually post comments as to how this would impact their respective Business.

Why ICANN should not sign this Settlement?

ICANN itself has stated publicly that it is more likely to win the lawsuit than lose it. There is no reason for it to sell out the Internet to settle this litigation when there is a greater chance of it winning the lawsuit anyways.


The outcome does not provide benefits to the Internet community that both ICANN and Verisign were intended to serve.


The ICANN staff are proposing to provide Verisign the ability to increase their prices by 7% annually. Everywhere around the world prices for domain names and web services are reducing. There is no reason for ICANN to grant an increase in the prices.


ICANN is supposed to act as an administrator of the Internet on behalf of the Internet community. This proposed settlement however benefits ICANN and Verisign at the cost of the community.


It is important at a time like this for you to stand up and make yourself heard. The Internet should not belong to any one organization. Any changes affect millions of businesses worldwide. It would be unfair if any such changes are made without consensus from the community as a whole.

Regards,
Bhavin Turakhia
Founder, Chairman & CEO
Directi

 

[Host47]

damn i dunno about anyone else but i can't be bothered to read all that...geez

 

[wot]

damn i dunno about anyone else but i can't be bothered to read all that...geez

That's encouraging - you obviously would have no problem with .com prices doubling :td:

 

[wasistdas]

If it happens it will suck. Well, it will not destroy the market, but will be very inconvinient.

 

[Jeffrey]

But there could be a positive outcome about this increase, the value of .COM domains would probably go higher.

But i'm praying that the prices will not increase. Please God.

 

[DomainSage]

damn i dunno about anyone else but i can't be bothered to read all that...geez

Hi Reaper,

I know we have had some good communications in the past but this one shocked me, I can only put it down the fact is is early in the morning here But it is worth reading ( and a VERY good post, rep added wot ).

The actual prices do not really make that much difference, it is purely the idea of what can they do in the future if this goes though ?

I have not really read the whole thing through yet ( early here ), but will tomorrow. I will be looking for a time scale, as at the moment I can just sign it as director of a UK company that trades in domains names and director of an ISP in Australia. In a couple of weeks I'll have some more 'credentials' to add so will add more weight to my views.

This is something that needs to be thought about in depth and can not be replyed to
in a short e-mail.

Anyway, stepping off my high horse, I'll sort out a reply in the next couple of days to e-mail off to them ... And probably post a copy here.

All the best

Richard

 

[AdoptableDomains]

pricing of .com doubling would not destroy, but would change the secondary market in a big manner. First, fewer "part timers" would be able to afford the game, and the big players could probably afford to stay and would likely get bulk pricing at much less anyway. It would probably be a boost for the other gTLD's and ccTLD' in some respects as long as they didn't follow suit. Drop services would probably love it, as more fair domains would drop because people couldn't afford the renewals. Some non-premium .com end user/owners may even switch to other TLD's if the pricing went too high, adding to the legitimacy of other TLD's.

Personally, I don't see pricing rising that much. In fact, I think it could go down even further yet as evidenced by the .net registry now being cheaper.

 

[JMJ]

Drop services would probably love it, as more fair domains would drop because people couldn't afford the renewals.

There would be no drop catching services. The only "service" would be Verisigns CLS.

Personally, I don't see pricing rising that much. In fact, I think it could go down even further yet as evidenced by the .net registry now being cheaper.

If this deal gets signed you will be GUARANTEED a price increase. Not a decrease.

 

[dongan]

really a shocking news. double the price will seriously affect the number of registration i think.

 

[tipsfromthetop]

I never have liked the idea of an all controling force when it comes to .coms but there is positives in this... I believe it will make potential buyers look at other extensions so potentially the value of these could rise.

Another benefit it would cut down on spam.. way to many junk .coms out there if the cost of purchasing a .com rises then hopefully that will help to stop billybob the hackdudester from purchasing one with his pocket money.

I know these are kinda weak examples but i try to find positives in everything and one thing i have learned in business never tackle the beast!! there solicitors have a bigger bite!

 

[tajimd]

This is why i think internet should not allowed to be controlled by any orgnisation or country. This creates a kind of monolopy which Verisign might create if its get the rights to increase the prices of domain. they might charge whatever they want since domain becomes their property. I believe no one earth should control Internet rather a group if people combiniing from different part of world and diffrent regions should just moniter the internet rather than controlling internet.

 

[wasistdas]

Well, I think Verisign will think twice before increasing the reg price. Remember, there is not a single gTLD, nor even 3 as had been a few years ago. And the number of gTLD will increase thus ICANN will diversificate the market. Yes, big boys will remain with .com even if the .com domain would cost 100 bucks per year. But there is also a positive moment. .COM will become a sort of antic art while part timers and general public will gather with other TLDs like .biz, .name, .info and new ones to come in future. By increasing the price Verisign will build a monument, not a market.

 

[Tippy]

I say bring it on, I'd rather put a stop to all these Snap/BO services which make it next to impossible for the average Joe Blow to hand reg a name and not have to sell the farm to get it.

For those that started in this game years ago I'm sure they would agree, there is no way I would be able to own some of my names if these Snap/BO services exsited back then, but I guess thats a whole diff. subject but something I'd much rather fight against then having the reg cost doubled...

There would be no drop catching services. The only "service" would be Verisigns CLS.

The BIG players would find a way around this, they have in the past and certainly will in the future, they have huge bucks to make just about anything happen.

 

[JMJ]

It would only make your job harder if they did "bring it on." All of those backorder services would be compiled into one. Verisign. So instead of being on top of your game and outsmarting the "Big Players" with the "huge bucks" you will have to have "huge bucks" to have a chance at getting a good name ever again... It will eliminate drop competition altogether all the while making Verisigns wallet very fat. In addition it opens the doors to a whole new fraud. I won't go into all of that here and give every one ideas just incase on the small chance Verisign does get away with it. But lets just say the big money won't be in drop catching. It will be in dropping.

 

[Tippy]

As far as I see it, I've been out of the drop game since it started, I just dont have the bucks to even give the smaller big players a run for their money, so it changes nothing for me whether there is one drop service or 1000. The types of names I reg these days will most likely remain the same and they will continue to be hand regged in the future as the big players have no interest in them.

I might have to pay double and that isnt a prob., paying 100x 1000x is...

 

[JMJ]

Actually since all registrars will have access to this "central listing service" informing the world of when and how every domain is dropped and let them know exactly where it is they can bid for it. You can pretty much guarantee it will put you and I out of business.

That is unless you get very creative but even the creative ways will cost more. It all ties into the very subject here. If Verisign is able to eliminate competitive bidding for it's contract it will increase prices. If Verisign is able to get complete control over the drops it again eliminates the competition. The only competition is for the bidding of the names all in one place. Not who was the first to get it or who has the best price at backordering it.

If such a system was in place now since like you I don't participate in the auctions myself I would be out of business. I survive on the basic principals of business. Buy low, sell high. I don't have 8-10 years to wait for a ROI. From another aspect. Lets say such a system was in place years ago. Back then I was the first to place a BO on mule.com at snapnames. Due to no auction process I was able to obtain that name for $39. Why because I was the first to backorder and snapnames was the first to grab it. If the competition was who has the bigger wallet, I'll lose everytime.

Now lets look at the CLS a bit more. If those with the big wallets want to they buy their own registry. They get bidding starts already at a lower cost than you or I. To explain, CLS auction starts at $0. This is in addition to the regular cost of your preferred registrar. The cheapest place I register names is $6.75 a year. So those with a registry are already $.75 ahead of me before we even start bidding. $.75 cents isn't alot of money when you think about it on one name. But when it comes to hundreds even thousands it adds up.

 

[TUFKATH]

Pretty long! But everybody is greedy so what do you expect?

 

[floatingworld]

funny how some domainers will whinge on about paying an extra 6% on top of their $7-$10 a year reg fee for a domain name which they want to sell on for $1000.

 

[JMJ]

funny how some domainers will whinge on about paying an extra 6% on top of their $7-$10 a year reg fee for a domain name which they want to sell on for $1000.

It's not all about price. It's about a monopoly. It's that naiveness that Verisign hopes for to gain them loads of cash. $.42 to alot of us isn't much but to someone living in a remote village in a undeveloped country it's alot. Why pay more for something when others have publicly stated they can do it for less. The only objective for verisign is to increase profit margins not increase technological advances. Hell they just a few months ago started updating whois nearly instantly when others have been doing it for years.

 

[floatingworld]

'but to someone living in a remote village in a undeveloped country it's alot'....yeah right, its a tough life in Nashville......