
ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money - moehm
https://www.namecheap.com/blog/icann-allows-com-price-increases-gets-more-money/
======
KerrickStaley
I sent this email to comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20@icann.org. Feel free to
borrow/edit it:

I oppose Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement. I believe that allowing
wholesale prices for .com domains to rise 72% over 12 years, which is far more
than the rate of inflation and also far more than Verisign's underlying costs
of maintaining the registry could possibly increase by, will dramatically hurt
the internet ecosystem. It will especially hurt small website operators, like
myself, and will discourage internet users from creating blogs and personal
pages, with the end result of reducing democratization of the internet.

Verisign reported a 69.4% operating margin in Q1 2019, so they clearly do not
need the extra revenue from this price hike. ICANN has granted a monopoly over
.com to Verisign and ICANN has a duty to every internet user on the planet to
carefully regulate this monopoly to prevent abuse by Verisign. The only
conscionable thing to do right now is to freeze wholesale .com prices and re-
evaluate 5-10 years from now. A policy that allows price increases tracking
the rate of inflation (but no higher) may make sense in the future, but right
now Verisign is already collecting far more from their .com monopoly than any
company would be able to in a competitive market [1]. It's simply not right to
allow them to raise prices at this time.

\- Kerrick

[1] For example, Alphabet, a highly successful player in a very high-margin
industry, has an operating margin of around 25%. Verisign's operating margin
is over 2.75 times that.

~~~
gowld
Write to your government, not ICANNN.

ICANN is accountable to no one, except the US government where their offices
sit.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN#Democratic_input](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN#Democratic_input)

~~~
thiht
ICANN is actually independent from the US government since 2016

~~~
dwild
Their structure may be independent from the US government, their office are
still there, thus has to respect the US laws and is still accountable to the
US government.

------
ohazi
This is not going to end. ICANN has revealed their hand -- they are corrupt.

But we don't actually need them. What we do need is a "Let's Encrypt" style
initiative to replace the DNS roots in their entirety, run by competent,
principled people.

It would be difficult, but the people who are pissed off about this have clout
at Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla (the web browser gatekeepers) and might
actually be able to pull this off.

There is no legal requirement that ICANN has to run this system. It's _just_ a
historical convention. We've successfully taken out arrogant/incompetent
(billion dollar) certificate businesses -- I think trying to get ICANN to
blink would be a good goal.

~~~
KorematsuFred
> run by competent, principled people.

That is a root cause of a lot of problem. Whatever org you build eventually
honest competent people will be replaced by callous assholes.

~~~
ohazi
I think we can accomplish a lot by demonstrating that we're serious about
routing around bad behavior. If people start seriously talking about migrating
away from today's ICANN, I suspect that one of two things are likely to
happen:

1\. ICANN might see this as an existential threat, realize that they can't act
with impunity, and will start to change their behavior. I am pretty
pessimistic about ICANN's current leadership, and think this is less likely to
happen.

2\. The powers that be will start to see what a disaster this would be, and
will find a way to replace the current ICANN leadership. I think this is more
likely to happen.

Either way, the result is a better outcome for everyone, at least for a while.
But that's how governance works -- leadership tries to get away with whatever
they can, and people need to get angry enough to threaten their ability to
continue down that path. This process doesn't end.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
Either that, or they'll try to get Congress to pass laws that force everyone
to use ICANN, in the name of security or some other.

~~~
ohashi
If Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft decided to split the root using
browsers, I think the US government would be happier having them under their
control. Why do they need to play ICANN's game if US companies control the new
DNS.

Fuck ICANN, why would US government want to continue to support a corrupt
international organization trying to avoid US government oversight?

------
BitwiseFool
I know very little about the technical and business side of DNS and Domain
Registrars. That being said, have things actually gotten more expensive for
them to operate?

I'm pretty confident the answer is no and these price increases just reflect
the need for a handful of entities to charge more for an essential service
with no viable alternative.

~~~
gkoberger
Another way to look at this (and this only works for domains, not things like
hosting) is supply and demand. There's a limit to the number of domains out
there, and there's a huge increase in people who want them.

It's almost like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies... scarcity is built in to
domains. At some point, they'll all be taken.

~~~
input_sh
How's there a limit when there's a new TLD on an almost bimonthly basis?

If you're going for something lower than 8 characters, odds are you're either
paying thousands or buying something that's not .com.

~~~
vel0city
Being able to register a .ninja or .space domain does not eliminate the limit
of practical .com domain names. Does an apartment building opening in Pierre
South Dakota have much of an effect on the scarcity of housing in New York or
San Francisco?

------
daun
If you're a California resident and are affected by the price changes, you can
file a complaint with the California Attorney General. If you're a US resident
outside of California you can file a complaint with the Department of Commerce
as well as the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. And if you
really want to get revenge against ICANN you can contact Senator Ted Cruz's
office and let them know what you think of ICANN's recent actions since their
2016 IANA takeover. He was the loudest political voice to oppose it when it
happened.

~~~
wahern
Senator Cruz opposed the transfer when it appeared ICANN's governance model
was going to be like the U.N., where countries might have veto power over
strong transparency, security, privacy, freedom of speech, financial
accessibility, etc. Senator Cruz and many in his party are disdainful of the
U.N. and similar multilateral international institutions; they oppose them on
principal.

But ICANN ended up being run more like a private company in a free market. The
fact that it _also_ resulted in poor financial accessibility or any of the
other feared consequences is irrelevant to Senator Cruz unless it somehow
furthered the vilification of social media outlets and his attempts to repeal
Communications Decency Act Section 230 protections. Don't forget, Cruz also
opposes net neutrality, believing it to be "the biggest regulatory threat to
the Internet".

------
giovannibonetti
Bear with me for a moment: I firmly believe that in order for good .com
domains to be available for a smaller price the registry fee should be far
higher.

The reason for that is speculation: even though a .com registration is dirty
cheap, getting a decent .com domain is very expensive because for many
companies it is worth it to keep the domains parked, and when someone wants to
buy one of them it gets very expensive - quite often it costs thousands of
dollars.

However, if registration prices went 10x overnight these domain hosting
companies would be forced to get rid of many "second class" domains, which
would be soon available for regular users without intermediaries. Off course
"premium" domains would still be expensive, but it's an advancement anyway.

~~~
mdorazio
Thank you for saying this. I think a lot of people probably haven't felt the
pain of actually acquiring a trademark and branded domain these days. My
personal opinion is that .com domains should be a minimum $100 per year. At
this price point the number of available domains would skyrocket effectively
overnight as it became untenable for squatters to hold on to them. If you
can't afford $100/year for a domain to be used for something actually useful,
you probably don't need that domain in the first place.

Of course at that price point, HTTPS should be the default and the extra
profits should go somewhere other than ICANN.

~~~
IceWreck
Youre thinking about yourself. Students etc who have .com domains cant afford
$100 a year for their domain? Should they be forced to give up their domains
because people like you couldnt get their chosen domains from squatters/

~~~
mdorazio
I'm not sure why students etc. need specifically .com domains.

~~~
tastroder
Right, they can use free .tk, .xx.yy domains that highjack their content to
serve ads. It's fine. /s

We've been there people and it sucked, hard. Neither anybody here, nor ICANN,
should get to decide what people can or cannot use domains for. Stipulating
such restrictions or unreasonably raising prices to exclude any group that is
neither rich or a company would essentially break the TLD. In that case you
can just get rid of .com and tie it into the US trademark system if you like.
Maybe that's where the internet is going these days but it's neither natural
nor a good direction in my book.

------
ObsoleteNerd
Is there a TLD/gTLD that isn't run by people intent on profiteering and
corruption?

Even if everyone were to abandon .com/net/etc, and moved to .whatever, you're
still supporting ICANN through IANA, no?

So basically we have no choice but to support them, or revert to sharing IP
addresses?

~~~
troquerre
There are well-funded projects working on creating a better alternative to
ICANN, namely [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org) which is creating
a distributed alternative root zone. The main benefit is security (the root of
trust is a distributed ledger instead of Certificate Authorities which are a
huge security hole), but there are additional benefits in that anyone can
register their own TLD privately without risk of that TLD being seized or
censored.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
> How do I register a Handshake name?

> Handshake leverages a blockchain based on unspent transaction output (UTXO)
> and proof-of-work (PoW) similar to Bitcoin for naming capabilities. The
> naming system features an on-chain smart contract-like functionality called
> covenants which restrict the future use of outputs of a transaction. Because
> covenants are built in at the blockchain layer via the consensus protocol,
> the handshake system enables different types of smart contracts which is
> used to develop an auction system for individuals to bid on domain naming
> rights.

> What does the Handshake names auction process look like?

> Users can buy or register domains through a Vickrey auction using HNS coins.
> All possible names are released weekly over the first year after launch.
> Users may submit blinded bids on the Handshake blockchain anytime after a
> name is released for auction. Bidding is open to everyone for ~5 days after
> the reveal period, and have ~10 days to reveal their bid price. A winner is
> assigned the name and, as it is a Vickrey auction, pays the second highest
> bid at the end of the reveal period. The winning bid amount of HNS coins is
> burned and permanently removed from circulation. Losing bids are returned
> and not burned.

... and you've lost me, as well as 99.9% of the rest of domain name owners.

It seems anything that involves blockchains at all is built by people living
in a bubble and completely oblivious to how the real world works.

------
dmos62
I feel like ICANN is anxious to demonstrate just how defunct our DNS system
is. Every ICANN's cleptocratic blunder is a step closer to an alternative.

------
arkitaip
"Verisign will be allowed to increase the wholesale price to registrars for
.COM domains by 7% each year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. After a two year
“freeze”, Verisign can increase prices by 7% annually during 2026-2029, then
another two year “freeze”. This cycle will continue, meaning that within 10
years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current
wholesale price of $7.85 — and the sky is the limit."

~~~
losteric
70%?! Wow, that's enough to fund all kinds of innovation in the domain name
space.

~~~
vajrabum
If by innovation you mean raise salaries, hire new people and add to your
management consulting contracts sure.

~~~
BitwiseFool
*raise executive salaries

------
hombre_fatal
Well, even if .com lost its credibility tomorrow, it couldn't come at a better
time with other tlds gaining credibility over the years. Only downside is that
a 7% increase is too slow to kill .com. Would be nice if it died fast enough
for the zeitgeist to actually consider another DNS system which I don't think
will ever happen without a distinct exodus event. Until then, this kind of
news doesn't really penetrate beyond HN.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
I'm not sure that an "exodus" is really possible.

Let's just say that, for example, the ACLU decided to bail out of aclu.org to
aclu.io. Whomever ends up with that domain now gets all incoming *@aclu.org
emails, which would include a massive amount of sensitive, privileged
information.

Has there ever been an instance of an online company with a serious presence
that changed domains? Even del.icio.us didn't let icio.us out of their hands.
(in fact, delicious.com wound up being the domain they eventually parted with)

and regarding alternative TLDs "gaining credibility," well first, THANK
GOODNESS we all lived long enough to be able to use other TLDs finally finally
finally; but who's to say this won't just happen to any other TLD?

ICANN needs to be reined in or replaced.

------
robgibbons
Between this, and the .org fiasco, I have lost any faith I had in ICANN's
stewardship of the web.

~~~
tekstar
I have a friend in the domain regulation industry. His take on the .org sale,
was that everyone's worries about what a private equity firm might do to a TLD
has already happened under ICANN.

------
yCombLinks
Possible positive side effect is reducing profitability of Domain Squatters,
leading to more names available. If you've ever tried to get a domain you know
what a hassle it is to find a decent .com

~~~
jolmg
I haven't looked for a .com in a long time, but when people are looking for
.com's, do they really find that their choices are mostly taken by squatters
and not by other people with legitimate uses for the domains? I would think
that .com's are just saturated because it's _the_ standard TLD and also
because it was only recently that new TLDs appeared.

~~~
dpcan
All squatters. This price change won't affect anything in terms of squatters
though, they'll keep buying even if the prices almost double over 10 years.
This just means more money for ICANN / Verisign.

Most squatters I know of today are holding domains simply so competitors can't
have them. They don't do anything with them. They just sit there and point
back to the registrar. I have many clients who own a ton of domains for just
this purpose. Some think they may actually use the domain someday, some
actually think if they point their domains to their website they'll get more
business (nope), but still, they own a lot of domains that other people could
probably use.

------
konschubert
Are there any alternative DNS resolution systems and which browsers are
implementing them?

~~~
dharmab
[https://ipfs.io](https://ipfs.io) has [https://docs-
beta.ipfs.io/concepts/ipns](https://docs-beta.ipfs.io/concepts/ipns), but the
names aren't human-readable- it still depends on DNS for human readable names:
[https://docs-beta.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink](https://docs-
beta.ipfs.io/concepts/dnslink)

Basic IPFS support was added in Firefox 59

~~~
troquerre
IPFS is more of a storage layer. Pairing it with a decentralized naming layer
like [https://handshake.org](https://handshake.org) (just launched a week ago)
would make for a powerful combination.

------
drenvuk
Fuck ICANN. It's time to move out of their control. There's no reason we have
to follow their rules or even use DNS.

------
NikkiA
I have mixed feelings about this, the increase by ICANN is outrageous, but at
the same time NameCheap are positioning themselves as heros here, and I've
been burnt multiple times by the byzantine way their renewal system tries to
fool you into paying for the wrong thing (put 'registration period as 10
years? suuure, we won't tell you you're paying for 10 years of privacy guard
over 1 year of domain registration though')

~~~
kodablah
Separate the issues and it'll make your conscience clearer. I too have issues
w/ how NameCheap presents things (sale prices for other TLDs don't clearly
state renewal rates for example), but that is orthogonal to their position
here.

~~~
bad_user
Actually they do clearly state renewal prices and I can't remember a time in
which they didn't:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fpqtji40aprg1w/IMG_4790.jpg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fpqtji40aprg1w/IMG_4790.jpg?dl=0)

Note that I'm not even a native English speaker, so you'd think that such
misunderstandings would happen more to people like me.

~~~
kodablah
That says retail not renewal. Often during sales of products companies will
put full price so you know your savings, not often is it really the full price
you'll pay later. One might think "sale for x/yr" would be different than
"sale for x/1yr".

------
nikolay
It's about time for the US Government to intervene and dissolve ICANN and
transfer the domain business to Mozilla! She should not piecemeal the problem
- we should solve it once and for all. We should start a Whitehouse petition
and ask the government to end this legalized scam!

Everything regarding domains is designed to scam the regular folk and pour
money into registrars and domainers!

Imagine you forgot to pay your phone bill, and then all your competitors start
bidding, and they get your number in 30 days. This cannot happen in the real
world, because it's wrong, but it happens with much more valuable ones (yet
cheap in terms of annual cost) - the domains.

All this is designed to steal money from all of us and pour it into the greedy
bellies of some of the sketchiest folks in the digital space - the domainers.
I'd say that even the SEO scammers are much more sophisticated and nice than
the domainers! Yet, ICANN allows them to exist, and guarantees their profits!

------
Marsymars
I'm really considering abandoning my firstlast.com domain (used for email and
personal blog) and transitioning to firstlast.ccTLD so that I can stop giving
Verisign money.

~~~
btrettel
I've had $lastname.org since 2004 but plan to move to $lastname.us for similar
reasons. I did register $lastname.org until 2029, though.

~~~
Can_Not
.us domains don't allow whois privacy.

------
leshokunin
We've moved from a market where people would be able to just pick a name for
something, to one where most names are taken.

Essentially, good .com names are now like prime real estate. Search engines
and browsers have done a bad job at making other TLDs as accessible, so
there's a natural bias towards them.

If domains are like land, I wonder why the market hasn't moved from a parking
system where domains are resold at a premium, to a leasing system?

------
ortusdux
Namecheap has already sent out an email about the possible price increase
containing an explanation and a link to the comment process.

------
giancarlostoro
How long until ICANN becomes audited over all these shenanigans I wonder?

------
notyourday
How else would ICANN pay for vacations for its officers, directors, advisers
and staff?

[https://meetings.icann.org/en/calendar](https://meetings.icann.org/en/calendar)

~~~
dmos62
Three 3-5 day events per year doesn't sound very relaxing.

