OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
In case anyone in this domain name industry really cares, the .org Registry Agreement contract was not the only contract renewed by ICANN.
The .info, .biz and .asia Registry Agreement contracts were renewed too on 30 June 2019!
Who approved these 4 contracts and who signed them? Nobody knows! Is there any accountability in ICANN?
ICANN Public Meeting 65 in Marrakesh, Morocco (Jun 24, 2019 – Jun 28, 2019) had no mention of these contracts and the ICANN board certainly didn’t approve them. We all know that these public meetings are just for show and to waste our money but this went too far. NOTHING has come out of ICANN regarding these contract renewals! NOTHING!
The ICANN board of directors was supposed to make these contract decisions, after consulting the public comments! So if it wasn’t the board that approved these contract renewals, who did???
Here are links the new registry agreements of .org, .info, .biz and .asia.
.Org, .info and .biz agreements removed all price caps. Domain name prices can skyrocket anytime. Yep, ICANN the organization built 20 years ago to protect all domain name owners screwed us all.
PIR (Public Interest Registry), Afilias and Neustar were issued the license to print money. These 3 US companies were given again these legacy extensions without even a call for tenders.
All 4 agreements added the Uniform Rapid Suspension system (“URS”) as a domain name dispute mechanism.
All this mess happened while ICANN pissed on thousands of people, companies and organizations that participated in 4 ICANN public comment periods for the renewal of these registry agreements. Almost 99% of comments opposed the removal of price caps and almost everyone that considered the URS said it was a bad idea. The .org comment period alone had 3,252 comments opposing the removal of price caps and 6 in favor.
What? You don’t care about .Org, .Info and .Biz? .Com and .Net are next!
Read my previous posts on the removal of price caps on .org, .info and .biz:
Maybe they’ll offer higher pricing for domains they deem ‘premium’…hope they don’t claw back like some newtlds have. More likely though, price raise across the board. If something.asia been a registered and working website, earning $100 a year, they can make it cost $120 renewal, right out from under you. Uniregistry already did exactly that with many of their ntld!
The signatories of the contracts are listed before the exhibits in the PDF versions. Page 35, eg, in the .info agreement. Used to be Akram Atallah, now Cyrus Namazi.
Thanks.
They have screwed millions of people.
Here is where this all leads: Dynadot is running a $1.85 dot co promo. Nothing on their site says there are any restrictions to this price. But try to register any really decent name and your price is not $1.85 but $115. The reason? These are considered “Premium” domains and the dot co registry has priced them as such. So dot co is squeezing out domain investors in their extension. And dot co is not a new gtld.
The removal of price caps on dot org and potentially dot com, along with the extensions Konstantinos wrote about here may very likely lead to a similar situation in these extensions too. So get ready for $115 dot orgs and dot coms based on PIR’s or Verisign’s whim. That is what the removal of price caps means. Not just a one or two dollar increase but potentially limitless or at least what the market will bear. It’s all over. You don’t think it’s possible? And URS is insult to injury.
And who is standing up to prevent this from happening to the domain industry? Who is speaking up against this?
Can’t consider it real estate investing when there’s allowance for only 10 years of locking in a price. I can barely call it leasing. If I lease, I know that building and my room probably be affordable for my whole life. If domains were any ‘investment’, you should be able to lock in 100 years. 10 years is a flash in the pan, and soon most these will all be over $100.
This is even worse. This is like the state property tax was given a private company to enjoy and they could raise the prices as they wished. They could even drive all the people out of the state and own all the land and houses.
I disposed of all my .CO domains years ago when I saw they turned into a “grab your ankles” organisation.
More recently I dumped all my .info and 99% of my .BIZ
Aside from blaming the basic human disposition toward evil, you can blame the (not) enlightened “transition” of ICANN away from US oversight, and all you misguided and naive ones who supported that (you know who you are).
As full of corruption and evil related problems of our own as we are here in the US, where the Internet was invented at public expense, and the DNS, it is virtually certain this would not be happening or even possible now if US oversight had not been removed. Removed based on a lying pretense argument I might add, just as so much is done in the world through lying. (Anyone remember the dire talking point threat of “balkanization”?)
In case anyone is not aware, by the way, this is where it’s all heading before a more final end: Revelation 13:16-17. (That’s right foolish trolls, do your thing now.) I would have liked to not see this crooked day in my lifetime, however. The Internet was something beautiful, warts and all, but this represents a true embrace of what is truly ugly, evil, and false.
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190628_responding_to_the_case_for_regulatory_capture_of_icann/
“By all appearances, it hasn’t taken long, in the absence of U.S. Government oversight, for rot to set in at the root. If the community is going to acquiesce to its own dismissal — if corruption is to become normalized at ICANN and in DNS governance — then, perhaps it’s time to start looking towards the heavens.”
So let this be a lesson: they do not act in good faith but as treacherous serpents. If anyone ever believes a single word from them ever again you are dumber than a rock. It’s time for action, not pleading or reasoning. This is how long we have until they do this to .com:
November 30, 2024
That’s how much time is left if society as we know it even lasts that long to do something in circumvention of this crooked racketeering cabal accountable to nothing and to no one.
It doesn’t just affect the “domain community” but the entire world and every person on earth who may seek to do anything online.
It’s worth considering that aside from any lucrative revolving door promises and arrangements, perhaps certain key ICANN members were actually personally bribed already. In a manner of speaking, that is certainly how things are done here in the US. What we have here is a system of “legal bribery” in which politicians are bought for less than pennies on the dollar, resulting in vastly gigantic ROI for those who buy them. Great deal for their owners.
I did a google search for “evil banks” and guess who was at first position …..
Use a credit union.
I read that the actual cost to operate a tld, .com exactly, costs Verizon about $3 each.
Verisign yes. And they are big spenders. Probably less than $2 are enough.
THANKS for raising this, ICANN has become a SELL OUT, a not fit for purpose bunch of freeloading bastards “owned” by the industry.
We have already seen HUGE price hikes, any price increases should only have ever been for NEW domains. We are like leaseholders having our rent hiked over and over again despite NO COST INCREASE to the registries, very low inflation, very low interest rates. It cannot be justified.
I am trying to sell a handful of my domains to fund a 10 year renewal (my resgistar requires I do one year at a time which makes it tedious for hundreds of domains.
Then once done I am going to sell them all
I HATE ICANN now, you are right that they were suppossed to protect us but clearly they have been bought and paid for, what else could justify such a complete FAILURE?
I think we need to take over ICANN, get on the inside, get votes of no confidence in the execs or other freeloaders ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
I am sure that with your contacts you could find an army of qualified people to sort this for a fraction of what they are spending,
Is that maybe the problem, that ICANN has become a gravy train for a load of freeloaders, isn’t this the disease of spending OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY.
Like people on a research gig, they try to extend it to keep the money rolling in.
I think we need a financial review of ALL of the activities of ICANN, WHO are employed or contracted, with the question being asked “is this really necessary” and “would the industry die without this”.
So that is your new objective, find out how we can kick these freeloaders OUT and if there is not the facility within the rules then let’s seek new law from Donald Trump to sort them out.
Why? A domain name (.com….) only has a legal power when being on a website (Portal, Business, E-commerce, Marketplace ….) with registered trademark.
We are in a domain market, where we investors are lost and tied by other companies.
The price increases will sooner or later rise, we will not be able to stop ICANN and others.
WIPO and the Whois for domain names work with the rules and laws of ICANN.
In the year 2001, the Creative Commons Open Copyright Licenses and their works go out to the world market.
We are Authors and Investors domain names with key words and grammar….. we create an art and a written work of author.
Remember that with the arrival of many new Extensions and domains for gTLDs created the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH).
To assert our work is very important, which we have to lose if we do not do something else.
Happy Day. Jose.