OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Kevin Murphy wrote a blog post “ICA rallies the troops to defeat .org price hikes. It won’t work” that mentioned a few opinions that I don’t agree with.
Kevin said that “the retail price of a .org (currently around $20 at GoDaddy, which has about a third of all .orgs) would be unlikely to rise to above the price of PIR-owned .ong and .ngo domains, which sell for $32 to $50 retail.” and that “Such an increase might adversely affect a small number of very low-budget registrants, but the biggest impact will be felt by the big for-profit portfolio owners: domainers.”
I don’t agree. A price increase will affect everyone around the world. Domains are effectively a monopoly. This is the same as if web hosting cost went up 10 times. Think about that for a minute…
Here is my comment:
I am sorry Kevin but it is really shortsighted saying that companies that own a .org won’t care if prices for .org rise from $10 to $50.
This is not about a single company. You are looking at the tree and losing the forest as we say in Greece.
It is about the whole effect this will have on the global economy no matter minuscule as it may seem now. How is such a huge price increase justified?
An increase of all domains (lets say about 200 million of legacy domains) from $10 to $100 would mean that an extra 180 BILLION dollars will go to just 4 companies over the next 10 years. 4 US companies. How is this justified?
Registrants now pay about 20 billion over 10 years.
They will have to pay 200 BILLION dollars!!!
Greece’s gross domestic product is about 200 billion per year. We would love to take over these extensions and run a few servers around the world. This is free money.
Companies (and domainers that you so much like to include) have already paid thousands upon thousands of dollars for the rights of these .org domains.
Your $32 or $50 prices are truly random. It could be $100 or maybe $856 per year. If all price caps are eliminated then it would be really easy for these 4 companies to raise the prices to $100 or even higher.
Any price increase would effectively mean that Verisign or PIR would cease your domains and make you pay rent on them. This is domain name confiscation.
We are now paying an administrative fee to these companies. An administrative is pretty much set. New gtlds are paying $1 or less per domain.
Anything above $2 or $3 per year is already too expensive for the backend registries that Verisign, PIR, Afilias and Neustar truly are.
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Most people only own one .org domain name and a price increase to $50 per year will not affect these people.
This is the bad logic that I write about. Let’s just give PIR a few free billions.
Yes, totally bad bogus logic, full of assumption and speculation as well. Who said anything about $50 a year, or even $100? The proposal is for no price caps when Registries already have a license to print money with the existing increases.
I commented on that blog post as well.
As it stands now ICANN has received 2600+ comments. I have not read one that is positive towards the proposal.
The comments are also from a very diverse group of people from small end users, companies, organizations, charities, groups, investors, and many more.
I also posted as article on LinkedIn –
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/say-unlimited-price-increases-org-domains-brad-mugford/
Brad
Personally I only own a few .org domains and I do so mostly to protect a brand where I already have the .com.
I think there are thousands and thousands of companies, domainers, and regular people in the same position.
All I can say is piss me off with a dramatic price increase and it will encourage me to do what I have been thinking of doing for quite a long time and that is to drop the .org.
Multiply by many people with similar opinions and the price increase will be negated by the drops. The company will be no further ahead.
The problem is that the principle involved re legacy TLDs is ironclad regardless of for-profit or non-profit, and if you even allow this to occur then it is a clear path to doing the same and more with all TLDs.
Who’s still liking that “transition” from US oversight now, by the way? Anyone think this could even be happening had that not occurred, regardless of the US having its own menu of corruption?
And for bonus points, who remembers the bogus argument used to “sell” the transition?
(“They will ‘balkanize’ if we don’t give in to this demand.”)
Not only are legacy TLDs categorically different as a public trust, they should also be thought of as a public utility.
The $32-$50 range I cited was not plucked out of the air. It’s the retail price range of .ong and .ngo domain names, which are run by PIR with no price caps in place. As such, they’re examples of what PIR charges non-profits when it’s not subject to price caps, and therefore I think relevant to this story.
The numbers I cite are at least less random than the $100 you speculate about above.
Why not go higher?
An increase of all domains (lets say about 200 million of legacy domains) from $10 to $1,000 would mean that an extra 3.6 TRILLION dollars will go to just 4 companies over the next 20 years. 4 US companies. How is this justified? Registrants now pay about 20 billion over 10 years. They will have to pay 4 TRILLION dollars!!!
I just read the comment you filed with ICANN. Seems you did go higher 🙂
.ong and .ngo are 1. a joke and 2. they are competing with capped .org domains. If all caps are gone then hell will brake loose.
Quite possibly.
Still, the numbers are not random. They’re relevant.
Konstantinos, you like how Kevin is now making fun of you here – http://domainincite.com/24171-ica-rallies-the-troops-to-defeat-org-price-hikes-it-wont-work#comment-557437 – ?
😉
I wasn’t making fun of him. In fact, I copy-pasted the same text into my comment right here on this post.
You started out by making fun of him, then thought better of it, so now give yourself plausible deniability?
Ah. I’m going to assume you’re the same anonymous “John” who’s been trolling me in the DI comments recently. No need to respond to you.
First off, there is only one “DI” among domain blogs, and yours is not it. That distinction belongs to Elliot Silver. His deserves it, and you do not.
Second, lying about what I have been doing at your comments does not help your cause. Virtually everyone recognizes I am anything but a troll, and all I do is post with relevance and genuine and well thought out passion.
Now as far as some of your own behavior in blog comments goes…
PS…https://onlinedomain.com/2019/04/27/domain-name-news/my-comment-about-price-increases-on-kevin-murphys-post/#comment-359893
PS, you’re going to have a very hard time finding anyone not lying who can honestly say anything here constitute’s “trolling” vs. genuinely germane and even passionately engaged and thoughtful statements: http://domainincite.com/24171-ica-rallies-the-troops-to-defeat-org-price-hikes-it-wont-work. And some would even appreciate my honesty and quality of being droll where I did happen to say to Zak “My original intention when coming here was to include another remark about how unsavory I have sometimes found Mr. Kevin Murphy here to be.” Be assured, that was also a true statement based on what I had been led to believe about what your post would be like. But alas, you also have no appreciation for how I did address the content of your actual post either, so unsurprising of you now. However, you are going to find it not just hard but impossible to find where I said anything to you “recently” there at all. And with a title like “ICA rallies the troops to defeat .org price hikes. It won’t work,” one would even think you were the one who was “trolling” Zak Muscovitch and the ICA, despite his great PR in responding to you the way that he did.
So run along and insult some more people who affirm something other than atheism like you.
😉