
ICANN extracts $20m signing fee for $1bn dot-com price increases - LinuxBender
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/07/icann_verisign_fees/
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Tepix
This appears to be a fierce competition between ICANN, the IOC, and the
reigning corruption champion: FIFA.

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Balanceinfinity
That's funny.

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killjoywashere
It's also one of the subjects in _The Dictator 's Handbook_, an excellent
layman's read on political economics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair
Smith.

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

If you want the hardcore game theory version, check out _The Logic of
Political Survival_ by the same authors:
[https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/gov2126/files/bueno_mesquita...](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/gov2126/files/bueno_mesquita_2003_logic.pdf)

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xemoka
All this BS with ICANN, what other options are out there to replace them? Some
decentralised solution would be great, I guess Namecoin is trying...

What other options are there that you're aware of?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root)

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Mathnerd314
OpenNIC looks like the easiest replacement, they mention some other TLDs
they're peered with on their front page such as emerDNS which is
decentralized.

That doesn't work for anyone who wants their site accessible to the public
though, since it won't resolve. Maybe once a few ISPs switch and Google,
OpenDNS etc. change their resolvers it'll be a possibility.

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davidu
OpenNIC is no different than ICANN aside from being a failure. It just appears
to be better since it uses a talk track that's attractive, but structurally,
it's probably even worse than ICANN.

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LatteLazy
The ICANN ITSELF got 20m. How many senior members will, in totally unrelated
transactions, suddenly find they can buy yachts or pay off mortgages they
previously couldn't in the next 12 months?

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unapologetic
Nah, they just change the rules then immediately jump into companies built
specifically to take advantage of the rule changes.

See the theft of dot org or the opening of TLDs.

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gen3
So, the price caps on .com have been released too? Isn’t this the same as what
happened to .org? When will we hear that .net is ballooning too?

What a scam.

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giancarlostoro
Honestly, I will just not renew, my domains aren't that special. I'll rather
have 1 domain and everything else be a subdomain.

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gen3
I’m defiantly going to drop down. Right now I have a personal domain, my
parents domain and a few other. High schooler me didn’t realize what I was
signing myself up for when I started using a personal domain.

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troquerre
You can also use alternative root zone projects like Handshake.org. Most
people wouldn't be able to resolve it by default but if it's just for personal
use it's trivial to set up a resolver for friends and family.

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download13
Oh look capital is eating another public service who'd've thunk

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unapologetic
We never bothered to properly build ICANN as a lasting public service. This is
what happens.

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Can_Not
What TLDs should be looked at that are in the nearly $10~ or less range and
are not likely to rate hike? I hate the idea of investing $10/year in a
personal use domain then getting a surprise $50 bill X years later.

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AWildC182
This is corruption in it's purest form, but I feel like there might be a
silver lining here. If they increase prices on domains the scummy domain name
squatters will get burned and have to dump a good chunk of their inventory
when renewal comes up. They're basically taking the margin that the scalpers
were exploiting.

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echelon
Legitimate players lose out as well. But you're correct that this hurts the
squatters more, as they're the ones subject to linear multiple cost increases.

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BitwiseFool
The rent seeking has begun in earnest.

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AmericanChopper
I can’t see how this is rent seeking. .com domains are a finite and scarce
resource, they should be increasing in price over time. The registration costs
are also a tiny fraction of what any desirable domain name would sell for on
the secondary market. I don’t think you can describe selling something for
well below the equilibrium price as rent seeking.

I’m also not sure it’s even a bad thing to have registration costs increasing.
DNS is a highly dysfunctional system, especially for the popular TLDs. If you
want an alternative system to take its place, then rising registration costs
will only increase the demand for that.

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mundo
Since you're getting downvoted for an honest question, I'll explain: you're
confusing the cost of _owning_ a domain with the cost of _registering_ a
domain. ICANN and Verisign don't own nor sell domain names, they just perform
administrative functions relating to owning and selling them. The gist of this
article is that Verisign gave ICANN a kickback to get the right to charge more
money without adding more value, which is pretty much what "rent-seeking"
means.

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vxNsr
So let's get the players straight:

In 2014 the Obama Admin decided to cede control of ICANN.

ICANN is run like a classic Italian mafia org, with corruption at every level
and zero accountability.

This year the Trump Admin rubber stamped a price increase on .com because....
reasons?

The price of domains should trend down. not up. This is a classic case of
regulation being abused by those in power to give each other a bonus.

Running a global address book has gotten cheaper and easier with automation
and yet we're allowing these orgs to just increase prices willynilly instead
of trying to make internet hosting more accessible.

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frandroid
> The price of domains should trend down.

Their value doesn't, so why should renewals go down?* It's not like
registration is related to anything like cost of operation...

*: I'm not in favour of this, but living in a capitalist market, I'm surprised things haven't gotten much worse, e.g. a sliding scale cost for domains, so Amazon would have to pay $50,000,000/year for its domain, for example.

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freehunter
I was actually thinking about this the other day. Domains are too easy to get,
and too cheap to hold on to. I like being able to go to Namecheap and buy a
domain name for under $10... what I _don 't_ like is the hours or days I spend
trying to find a domain name that isn't already taken and parked. And even if
you paid $3k for that parked domain, it might now have _years_ of history with
search engines as a parked domain that you have to fight against.

If ICANN really wants more money, they'd increase the renewal fee for parked
domains every year until it's actually put into use.

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gruez
>If ICANN really wants more money, they'd increase the renewal fee for parked
domains every year until it's actually put into use.

and how do you differentiate a parked domain from a non-parked domain?

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davchana
Yeah, people always use domains for non-website purposes, like email etc with
nothing coming up if browsed. Also, with no dns on main except cnames, which
can not be easily found as easily mx or txt records can be seen on a gived
direct domain.

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freehunter
That’s not really a parked domain then is it? You know when you’ve hit a
parked domain when it loads a page covered in ads that says “buy this domain
for $30,000” at the top.

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salawat
I never understood the fascination with domain names anyway.

I actually rather liked just memorizing IP's. I thought it had a nice parity
with phone numbers, which we were all kind of used to anyway.

The whole "buy a name" thing struck me as little more than a land grab for
speculators anyway. You already have a unique identifier to the overall
network... Just use it!

