
ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains - ndmrs
https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-all-price-caps-on-org-domain-names/
======
halfmatthalfcat
The whole domain market experience is utter crap. Commoditizing domain names
has created such an unbalanced power dynamic between buyers and sellers where
the sellers hold all the power. Gatekeeping at it's finest.

Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of
State/Division of Corporations.

I shouldn't have to name my company some contorted bastardization to
successfully enter the market.

~~~
belorn
Registering a trademark is generally more expensive than a domain name, and
trademarks don't compete on the same namespace and is split depending on
industry. The biggest difference to the domain market is that with domain
names everyone is clogging the same namespace. If people just spread out based
on nationality and industry it would be easy and cheap.

To make a direct example, if I talked about Abba here in Sweden, most people
think about the music band. But if I talk about Abba in the context of food,
people will instead think of Abba seafood that make Kalles Kaviar and pickled
herring. Abba.se as a domain is thus very ambiguous as it doesn't specify if
it about food or music, and abba.com is likely to surprise people as it has
nothing to do with either.

To make matter worse, companies that want to protect their trademark or work
actively at preventing fake shops will often buy several hundred versions of
their domain names under different name spaces. It is seen as best practice,
especially for online shops.

~~~
bin0
But at the same time, I think we might be a bit to far with the current setup
of the web to change this. Not saying it can't be redesigned better, though. I
can't see everyone moving to "abba.food.se" or "abba.music.se", especially as
domain length is at a serious premium (though my information is old and it's
just a correlation, it's the best factual support I could find short-notice
for what is commonly known). [0]

There's a fine line between "clogging the namespace" and commoditizing
something. I like being able to have my own domain - I can host stuff, run a
web site, access services with a friendly name, attach friendly names to my
internal IPs, etc. Why should I have to be a legally-registered something-or-
other to do that? And if I'm not, why should I have to settle for something
three times as long? Most of the pollution is from squatters, who are
cancerous to the internet.

[0] [http://www.gaebler.com/Domain-Length-
Research.htm](http://www.gaebler.com/Domain-Length-Research.htm)

------
pmlnr
The whole decentralize everything! movement seems to overlook DNS. I get that
technically the DNS system is decentralized, but in reality, you lease a
domain from a random, usually politically charged entity, who can do anything
with it, if they wish.

We need a real DNS system, one where an individual can request and have a
domain for life and which is truly decentralized.

Unfortunately none of the attempts - .onion with tor, .bit with namecoin, etc
- seem to be working. .onion is despised because tor and impossible to
memorize them; .bit never gained any traction and namecoin, being a bitcoin
clone, has it's own issues.

Anyone knows of any working approach?

~~~
ailideex
> We need a real DNS system, one where an individual can request and have a
> domain for life and which is truly decentralized.

I very much want this also - but this cannot be solved in the same way as the
challenge of business domain name assignment - a different approach should be
used:

[idx].[yyyyddmm].[given_names].[family_name].id

e.g.

023.19830210.john_smith_3rd.doe.id

given_names can have some standard seperator

And then if there are two people with same given names with same family name
they get different indexes. And this will get everyone riled up because this
means you will need a worldwide consistent database of people and you will
only be able to get this if you give very good proof of ID and then this
because your world ID number basically.

~~~
cameronbrown
Unless someone goes out their way to choose their own 'branded' name perhaps
they could just receive a unique hash of their name for a domain? Tools can
always be built to handle these names so you're not memorising such lengthy
domains.

~~~
ailideex
How do you decide which person get which name? This just gets you back to the
whole ICANN problem. I can remember a couple of digits which makes my name
unique. I cannot remember 1e873645-1f68-4b48-9eae-934ec717229b

~~~
cameronbrown
That's just a technical problem that new infrastructure can solve by
abstracting away the name. Instead of visiting
1e873645-1f68-4b48-9eae-934ec717229b.com/foo, you're just visiting "bar/foo",
where 'bar' is their name. Click on the URL and the full hashed version is
revealed for proper sharing.

In the same way that nobody memorised Facebook's UUID of a person, they can
just remember their name.

~~~
ailideex
And then we are back to the problem of deciding who gets what name

------
cardamomo
Press release from Public Interest Registry, which oversees .org and similar
TLDs: [https://pir.org/pir-welcomes-renewed-org-
agreement/](https://pir.org/pir-welcomes-renewed-org-agreement/)

> Regarding the removal of price caps, we would like to underscore that Public
> Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and currently has
> no specific plans for any price changes for .ORG. Should there be a need for
> a sensible price increase at some point in the future, we will provide
> advanced notice to the public. The .ORG community is considered in every
> decision we make, and we are incredibly proud of the more than 15 years we
> have spent as a responsible steward of .ORG. PIR remains committed to acting
> in the best interest of the .ORG community for years to come.

And PIR's May 1 open letter to the .org community, which has much the same
message as Friday's press release: [https://pir.org/an-open-letter-to-the-org-
community/](https://pir.org/an-open-letter-to-the-org-community/)

~~~
shock
> Public Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and
> currently has no specific plans for any price changes

This means nothing. It's like when you get the hiring paperwork and the HR
person says regarding the non-compete: "oh, don't worry about it, it's not
enforceable"...

~~~
danShumway
Exactly. If it's not an issue or it's not enforceable, then why not put it in
writing?

~~~
ohashi
Because then they would be accountable. This whole process was a sham, I wrote
about it [https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/07/01/icann-fails-the-
int...](https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/07/01/icann-fails-the-internet-
community-allows-an-unlimited-non-profit-tax/)

The contract was written behind closed doors and approved exactly as proposed.
The public comment period was a sham (no surprise).

------
danShumway
I'm _slowly_ starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for
domains is a mistake.

Partially because phishing domains is already kind of easy (the rapid increase
in tlds _isn 't helping_), partially because the race to grab and hold names
has been having increasing negative effects, and partially because (aside from
domains) many actual URLs are already impossible to remember. We're running
into the same problem with SSL certificates -- the position of LetsEncrypt is
now that they shouldn't be used for identity verification.

There would be some awful challenges if we got rid of the human-readable part
of domains, but the benefits of moving to something like a unique hash or key
instead:

\- instantly getting a domain for anything and have it be permanent, without
any renewals.

\- getting rid of most name-squatting.

\- being explicit and up-front with consumers about the dangers of phishing,
and the need to build separate identity-verification infrastructure that
couldn't be beaten with dumb attacks like the `rn m` trick.

I dunno. It could be a really bad, stupid idea, but I want to start thinking
about if there are ways we could share domains in a hashed form on
podcasts/posters/etc... that would mitigate some of the obvious downsides to
having them be difficult to remember or type.

I know IPFS and DAT are using hashes for everything, but as far as I know
they're both falling back on stuff like IPNS and human-readable aliases when
URLs get shared, and to me those have the exact same downsides as the domain
system we're already using today. I'm not necessarily advocating anything,
it's just less obvious to me today that a naming system that uses actual words
provides more benefits than downsides.

~~~
creeble
The DNS only provides one upside: memorable names.

But there aren't enough downsides to ever be more important than this one
feature, or you would just be telling people IP addresses already.

~~~
danShumway
I want to be able to carry a domain between IP addresses.

But to rephrase your argument in a way that does feel more convincing to me,
maybe there aren't enough downsides to ever be more important than this one
feature, or I would be registering random strings for my domains already, just
to get rid of the effort of finding new names for things I'm building.

------
killjoywashere
In light of the prior article about ICANN as an unaccountable private company
(1), this is a good time to encourage everyone to read Bruce Bueno de
Mesquita's _The Dictator 's Handbook_ (2). This is a classic setup for
dictatorship by a small cabal (the board): a vast, unempowered populace, a
clear source of money (increasing domain fees), and a fairly small elite that
needs to be compromised, particularly relative to the size of the unempowered
populace.

If governments and corporations haven't already started buying influence, I'd
be shocked.

(1) [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann-
int...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann-internet-us-
government)

(2) [https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-
Po...](https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-
Politics/dp/1610391845)

------
soulofmischief
> This is despite only six out of over 3,000 comments being in favor of
> removing price caps.

Oh.. okay. Seems totally fair. If ICANN et al. want to charge an arm and a leg
from non-profits seeking a .org domain on a public utility, I guess we can say
goodbye to the prestige generally associated with that extension.

~~~
jedberg
And all six were written by lobbyists for Verisign.

~~~
klez
It's a shame you're being downvoted, considering there was a post here last
week proving this very fact.

~~~
SquareWheel
Accusations of shilling are pretty serious, and should include evidence
alongside the claim.

------
vectorEQ
"The good news is that Public Interest Registry’s management is competent and
well-guided. They will likely wait a while before making any major changes to
avoid comments of “we told you so”."

Well that's nice of them, so we get to pay crazy amounts in the near future
instead of instantly. how generous.

~~~
londons_explore
Bets on how long? I reckon 6 months. And they'll use some excuse like "to
prevent spam" or "infrastructure costs are going up" (despite them earning
millions per year and having practically no expenses)

------
mehdix
Does it mean that renewal prices for currently owned .org domains will sky-
rocket?

~~~
pmlnr
Potentially yes.

------
foota
Related to discussion about domain industry in general, I stumbled on the
weirdest business the other day trying to go to a website name and instead
typing crun.com.

It leads to [https://venture.com/domains/](https://venture.com/domains/),
which is... a startup that rents out high visibility domains to others, with
discount plans available where the price increases exponentially with the
assumption that your startup does as well.

One of those things where you're not sure if it's satire at first.

~~~
citrusui
Interesting quote that I found from Venture's homepage:

> The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals
> weakness. Unless you’re so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal
> domain suggests you’re a marginal company.

\- PAUL GRAHAM, Y Combinator

------
threezero
One of the article comments suggests antitrust action, so I looked up prior
lawsuits against ICANN for abusing their monopoly. The only one I found shows
it being settled, not dismissed. Maybe it’s time to start filing complaints
with government agencies against ICANN.

------
walrus01
Ever since icann lifted the floodgates on all the new gTLDs, it's been almost
nothing but unmitigated mediocrity. Follow the money, look at how much a
company like donuts pays to icann for the "application fee" for each
individual gtld.

Giving .Amazon to the company and not the brazilian-peruvian group that wanted
to run it was really a fine example of icann in the year 2019.

~~~
ailideex
> Giving .Amazon to the company and not the brazilian-peruvian group that
> wanted to run it was really a fine example of icann in the year 2019.

Not to be that guy - but why should the brazilian-peruvian group have gotten
it instead? If you said that the actual group of mythical woman should have
gotten it I would say maybe you have a point, but then we would have to first
figure out how mythical creatures can own things.

~~~
salawat
>Not to be that guy - but why should the brazilian-peruvian group have gotten
it instead?

News flash: You're being that guy.

They have a far more legitimate claim because they administer the majority of
the geological zone known as the Amazon Basin, and have since long before
Amazon the company was a twinkle in Bezos' eye?

I mean... I'm hoping you were being tongue-in-cheek... Nowadays it seems to be
getting more difficult to separate the jokers from those who just haven't
quite thought through things long enough before posting.

~~~
akerl_
Notably, it’s not called “the Amazon Basin” to the people who live there
(given that English is not their primary language).

~~~
walrus01
You may be talking about the indigenous languages of the region, but the whole
region is literally called "Amazonas" in Spanish and Portuguese.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Amazonas](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Amazonas)

------
jlgaddis
If you have any .org domains, you may want to consider a 10-year renewal
before any price increases happen.

~~~
tzs
Network Solutions also offers 20 year and 100 year terms. ICANN rules say 10
years is the max, so I'm not sure how this works. Does NS just deal with it 10
years at a time at the underlying registry, eating any price increases
themselves?

20 years .org at NS is $13.99/year, which is close to the more reasonable
registries, such as Namecheap. 100 years gets it to $9.99/year, which is
pretty good--if you believe that NS will really eat any underlying price
increases over that time (and, of course, you will actually be using the
domain for most of that time). (Well...pretty good until you remember that NS
charges another $10/month for WHOIS privacy, which is free at Namecheap [1]).

[1] ...and I would assume at other popular registries. I'm just using
Namecheap for comparisons because that is where I now have my domains.

~~~
jedberg
That's a brilliant business model. They get all the money up front, get to
invest how they want, and if there is a price increase, it probably will be
less than inflation, and almost certainly less than their investment returns
on your upfront payment.

~~~
londons_explore
Potentially unlimited losses if the price goes up to $99999 per year...

Although in that case, I bet they'd just give an excuse and offer a refund of
the originally paid amount.

~~~
jedberg
Keep in mind though that the price of the domains has to still be feasible for
other people to register, so it would never go that high.

------
1-6
Will .com prices eventually increase? That'll bring havoc to my collection.

~~~
teh_klev
From the article:

 _" ICANN's decision foreshadows that the organization will agree to .com
price increases. Eventually, caps on .com domains could disappear."_

So make of that what you will.

------
nikolay
ICANN is a mafia. Not sure why it exists in its ugly form today. I'd rather
transfer these rights to Mozilla.

------
C1sc0cat
Not to be bitchy maybe Poptel should have won the bid to run .org back in the
day - not that I am biased :-)

------
londons_explore
I'm glad I don't own any .org domains...

I bet the renewal price will now go up by 25% every year forever...

