.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

 

[JMJ]

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

I never said I lived in a remote village in a undeveloped country. Should I not care about whether or not they can afford the same luxuries as I? I'm assuming that is what you're saying. It's a proven fact once ICANN was formed and Network Solutions wasn't the only player in the game that prices dropped rather than increased because competition was introduced. With this contract Verisign wishes to eliminate competition from here to eternity.

 

[Genialnames]

Well, I agree with who say that price it is not the point, but monopolistc attitude, for the price I really i think it is a misleading unuseful leverage to gain attention.
It will not affect so much or may be at all the situation,(or probably as someone suggested it could even represent some advantages) for these reasons:
first it is not that all the registrars apply the same fees right now.
Actually I pay 7.99, maybe last year was 7.50.
There a re a lot registrars who charge more , even much more, some are cheaper. So that 7% year increase it seem it is not relevant at all.
Also considering a natural (?) inflation ratio .
An exception could be opposed for very large portfolios,having 10.000 domains to renew a 7% it is noticeable, but not dramatic,it depend how much they currently are payng.
Maybe a registrar like mine will not charge for the first couple of years finding more convenient to become more competitive without retouching the fees, many others will do the same, just those who are too much competitive with prices today will raise the fees, but even this wouldn't change anything indeed since if they customer are happy with their service, they will no go away, having noone else cheaper to go with.

I will follow to see what wind will blow next.

 

[deu12000]

What is inflation every year 2.5 to 3%? 7% really isn't a big boost in price. Of course like everyone else I don't want to pay more than I have to, but if it happens it happens. The cost of living and everything else increases every year, yet domains seem to get cheaper every year. I'm sure Verisign is laughing their way to the bank which is why I don't agree with the proposed increase, but if it happens like everyone else, I'll have to live with it.

 

[0xide]

if .com raised wouldnt that cause .net and .org to raise to?

 

[redz]

if .com raised wouldnt that cause .net and .org to raise to?

probably but what would happen to the other extensions? such as .us and .info

 

[JMJ]

The reason prices decreased on .net is because Verisign had to bid for it's new contract. Due to technological advances (which btw Verisign seems to stay at the back of the pack on even though it makes more money) prices decrease because the cost to operate is less. IE. Hardware costs, Bandwidth costs, employee costs, etc.

Another thing to think about. Verisign currently makes $6 a domain and they really only have operation costs. Whereas one place I register names charges $6.75 a name and then they have to deduct $6 to Verisign, credit card transaction fees ($.25-.35+2-3%), pay the ICANN fee of $.25, which probably leaves them with a about $.10 profit on each domain before they start paying the other bills such as support techs, their operation costs, etc. Now ofcourse they don't make their living off of this $.10 and in fact they probably have to use the funds from their other services to pay the upkeep of it.

So in a one domain senario Verisign is already making 60 times the amount of that registrar. Now you may ask why does the registrar charge so cheap? For one they have to be "competitive" and two they use that competitive price as an incentive to use their other service/s. Which is why alot of companies are actually losing money by offering registrations and supporting them.

 

[armin]

what .com domains doudle that would be bad then it would be almost 1,000 NP$

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Double? What are they now, about $8.95

$8.95*2 = $17.90

Just make sure you register your domains for 10 years before the rise... they will be worth tons more than they were when you got them for reg fee anyway by then ! :hehe:

 

[Genialnames]

hehehe, a little expensive in the beginning but a wise investment in the long run!

 

[JMJ]

Once again it's not entirely about the price of a domain. It's what the contract empowers Verisign to be able to do.

On their todo list

sitefinder: Either way they are going to earn money off of you. You either register your name and all typos. And/Or pay for placement on their wildcard DNS landing page.

CLS: With this not only will it cost you an arm and a leg to get a good name ever again because you will be bidding against the world. But, owners will be able to add their names to it during active status so in addition to eliminating all competition in the drop/auction market it will pretty much eliminate domain brokering altogether.

The cost to be an accredited registrar doubles aswell. This will make those registrars operating on an already slim profit margin if not a negative one to think twice about renewing or even getting it. This again decreases competition and drives up prices.

Get indefinite control of the .com namespace and do all of the above plus whatever else they decide they want to do without asking anyone if they can do it.

None of this does anyone any good except for Verisign and it's shareholders.

 

[Sir Regalot]

I buy my .co.uks for £4.68 for two years registration. Or $8 for two years. The cheapest .com is $8 for one year. Over 40 million .coms have been sold whereas there are 3-4 million .co.uks. Surely, .coms should not be twice as expensive as .co.uks when ten times as many have been registered.

 

[JMJ]

Great response from Tucows

http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/msg00242.html

 

[DNWizardX9]

I buy my .co.uks for £4.68 for two years registration. Or $8 for two years. The cheapest .com is $8 for one year. Over 40 million .coms have been sold whereas there are 3-4 million .co.uks. Surely, .coms should not be twice as expensive as .co.uks when ten times as many have been registered.

you can get .com's from yahoo for $2.99/yr

 

[FedPrimeRate.com]

To all: pls post copies of any emails you send to ICANN about this here.

AmCy

 

[JMJ]

ICANN and Verisigns legal problems just got worse.

http://wadnd.com/Complaint(ver4).pdf

 

[Monolith]

ICANN and Verisigns legal problems just got worse.

http://wadnd.com/Complaint(ver4).pdf

linkified for the lazy: http://wadnd.com/Complaint(ver4).pdf

 

[cache]

Will Verisign get all the increased fees or is it some kind of tax that will contribute to the infrastructure? If Verisign get will the fees, then we should be Verisign stock. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the increase myself.

 

[JMJ]

Finally an article focusing on the real issues rather than just the 7% increase.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051129/icann_verisign_lawsuits.html?.v=3

 

[DN Tycoon]

The price increase is not my main concern, the fact that slowly but surely the "Big Corps" are and will squeeze us out of the picture. Not to say they don't want our business but they are looking to sell each domain at a premium price to the big spenders which will close the door to all the "part timers" and "small players" in the DN market. Once the sytem is central they will have every drop to sell at overinflated prices and over 3/4 of DN players will be up crap creek. It all revolves around money like everything else but if we don't push back it will end soon down the road for some.

 

[bluesman]

All dot coms, nets and orgs will go up somewhat, but not dramatically - the others not much at all. That's simply because Verisign is NOT the only ballgame in town anymore.

Granted, before the year 2000 if Verisign pulled off a doubling of dot com prices (at that time going from $35 to $70) there would be little that any of us could do about it. But now that there are many other much cheaper registrars out there (notably Godaddy) there would instead be little more than a ripple effect.

So don't panic and rush out to buy lots of dot com junk before "the bubble bursts." That's exactly what certain greedy concerns want you to do. Hang tight and don't fall for it.