ICANN might want to try the "Stop Spending Money Like Drunken Sailors" strategy first, before raising prices.
I don't know anything about their budget. Do they have unnecessary spending?
Regardless, any cuts to oversight are terrible given the state of the industry and, as a registrant, I'd rather see the fee double or quadruple if it would result in increased oversight. In my opinion, ICANN policies seem to benefit registry operators at the expense of all other participants and this is another step in that direction. Layoffs and a reduction in oversight are a far better outcome for the registries than increasing fees and maintaining or increasing oversight.
At this point, registrants should be 100% in favor of increased ICANN fees. ICANN is supposed to represent registrants, registrars, and registries. The registrars and registries are contracted parties and
according to ICANNs docs:
ICANN's contractual compliance department maintains working relationships with contracted parties
Who's going to lose out if ICANN lacks the resources to act on behalf of all parties? Is it going to be the registries and registrars that have existing relationships and points-of-contact or the registrants who don't even get an email address as a point-of-contact when they submit complaints?
When I submitted my complaint, the confirmation comes from a no-reply email address and I had a difficult time following up to find out why nothing was happening.
Obviously I can't say how ICANN plans to redistribute the workload of the people being laid off, but, based on my experience, registrants will be disproportionately neglected if the workload of the remaining employees becomes untenable. At the very least, it's not going to result in a situation where they want to incentivize registrant participation.
They probably can't change their registry contracts at this point, but I think it makes more sense if the ICANN fee is tied to the price of a domain. For example, set the base registration fee at $0.18 and the baseline renewal fee at $0.25. Then tie everything else to .com. If a .com domain costs $10.26 per year, a domain on a TLD charging $20.52 should pay $0.36 fee for registration and a $0.50 fee for renewal.
Keep the price controls in place on .com and do:
Code:
domain price / .com domain price * baseline ICANN fee
In my opinion, that can be justified with the same reasoning the registries use to set high prices. Fewer registrants on a TLD means per-domain prices need to be higher cover costs. Plus, if registries are charging exorbitant prices, at least there's more money going to ICANN (aka oversight) which should help registrants when things go too far.
It works for premium domains too. If someone has a premium domain that costs $102.60 per year, the ICANN fee would be $1.80 for registration and $2.50 for renewal. Premium domains can have per-domain pricing and that makes each domain somewhat unique. They're more difficult to oversee and, without having any metrics, I would guess are more likely to elicit registrant complaints. Assuming that's the case, they
should have higher ICANN fees.
In addition to that, I think the ICANN fee should increase annually and the increase should be tied to increases in the price of .com domains.
Once you register a domain the registry has a monopoly position against you because there's exactly one registry that you're beholden to forever after the initial registration. Having strong oversight in that scenario is
critical for the long term health of the industry and I think ICANN should be given broad leeway by all industry participants to increase fees as needed.
