CRITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Entire Domainer Community

[David G]

Let me say that Tim Ruiz of GoDaddy.com did submit a letter of opposition (posted in the ICANN forum) and I am glad he did this. I believe GoDaddy also joined as a signatory on another letter representing a number of registrars who oppose the contracts (also on the ICANN forum). However, it would be great to hear Bob Parsons make a personal statement on the issue as well, and even better yet post his thoughts in his blog.

OK, thanks for correcting me on that.

[DomeBase]

This wouldn't necessarily be the case. Business (in most countries) already has to put up with all kinds of regulatory and other rent-seeking BS. Here in the US not long ago they passed the ADA, a business disaster that has probably cost over a trillion dollars in compliance by now. But it passed. And not long ago they passed Sarbanes Oxley, costing many companies millions of dollars last year.

Now keep in mind that any price increase would probably be gradual at first, following the "how to boil a frog alive" principle. So if the cost of renewing cars.com goes up to $100 then $500 then $2000 per year, do you think the CEO would even notice, let alone take time out of his schedule to protest?

Even at $10,000/year/name, domain names would represent just a sliver of the budget for large companies, especially if only the choice ones were charged at that amount, a more likely scenario then the registry trying to charge high prices for every typo and derative names the company has snapped up or hijacked.

Let's face it, the people with the highest probablity of getting screwed are us, domainers and small-scale web developers.

I agree. For example, a number of businesses have their domains at registrars that charge $50 when there are registrars that charge around 1/10th of that. For most businesses, particularly large ones, the price of a domain is such small potatos that it is below their rader screen. An increase to $50 or $100 would not make a bit of difference to them. They may even welcome it as a way to weed out.. ah... how to be polite here... well you can guess where am going with this.

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In contrast -- how about one of the big domain aggregating companies or parking companies? What will happen to their business model if their registration costs increase 10x or 20x? Rome. Fiddle. Burn.

One other thing. "Business" is not a monolithic entity. If the .COM registry were granted pricing authority to generate, say, an additional hundred million or billion dollars... then they, as a business, would gain. Whenever a particular business gains from some action, there is a way for that business to generate good will among those who otherwise might oppose that action. Think about it for a moment.

[Toker]

Dear DNForum Friends - An online petition was posted today to the internet that is very important to all of us. The petition is located at:

BadForBusiness.org

ICANN have proposed damaging contracts pertaining to .biz, .info, and .org domain names that will allow discriminatory pricing. This means that the renewal fees on your biz/info/org domain names may be jacked up in price many times over. Can you imagine paying $500 per year for each biz/info/org name in your portfolio?

It is critically important that you, your friends, the entire internet community fight these unacceptable contract terms that will open the door to many abuses and that may damage online commerce for years to come. Your signature on this petition will deliver a clear message to members of Congress that you will not allow your business endeavors on the internet to be crippled by predatory pricing as a result of poorly written contracts blessed by ICANN.

Please read and sign the petition at your earliest convenience. It will be a very worthwhile investment on your part in protecting years of hard work, investment, and financial risk.

Many thanks!

Damn, I'm going to fly a kite to ICANN right now, how dare
they think they can inflate Domain pricing the way we do!!
When you stop to think about it tho doing that would render biz/info/org
domains worthless because even the legit sites would drop them for a different site TLD.