registries increase fee (again)

[.biz]

I got an email about this. They seem to collude and increase fees during the same period. Monopoly!


A number of Registries have recently announced price
increases that will go into effect later this year. Here's
the rundown:

* .COM increases by $0.44 to $6.86 beginning on Oct. 1, 2008
* .NET increases by $0.38 to $4.98 beginning on Oct. 1, 2008
* .ORG increases by $0.60 to $6.75 beginning on Nov. 9, 2008
* .INFO increases by $0.60 to: $6.75 beginning on Nov. 1, 2008
* .BIZ domains will stay the same as the Registry announced
it will not increase fees.

[Acro]

There is no "collusion". It was approved by ICANN.
I recommend multi-year renewals to those with large portfolios. It increases the expenses for the following tax year as well

[namesdencom]

They are going to screw around until they end up with a slew of drops. I really don't think this is good for the registrars or the industry.

If the assumption is that somebody will always pick up the drops and they will keep getting their piece of the pie on zillions of names they had better think twice.

If they keep it up the greedy bas&^%ds will get nothing

Ever tried to sell a name? LOL Then you know just how what the market value is on the domain names that these greedy folks rely on people to keep buying.

There is a point of diminishing returns for portfolio owners like our company with over 1k names.

What is X% of nothing annually? This is the question that they better be asking themselves before they decide again to nickel and dime the industry property owners for property that at least as far as my sales reflect has not risen in value to substantiate higher annual fees.

Go ahead, those with opposing views but before you do ask a couple of simple questions.

1) How many names are renewed and how many sales show up in the DNJournal report?
2) How many names in your portfolio have produced an increase in revenues the last year?

My points exactly

Dwindling (not growing) revs and a microscopic percentage of names sold vs. owned does not equal or justify higher renewal or acquisition rates.

BTW I think I will increase all my current holdings asking price by 10% Sorry for those who missed out but apparently the powers in the industry are full of GAS apparently us owners are feeling the pump in the you know where!


Thats my opinion let's see what shakes out.

[intellect]

What do you expect. ICANN is clearly a FOR-PROFIT business.

[radioz]

Internet Collusion for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN):

Whatever these guys are supposed to be for, they are primarily there for the enrichment of the registries and registrars. Here is a run down of the money making schemes that they have endorsed or which they at least ignored for a long time:

* Allowing registrars to sell (or keep!) any and all expired domains at no cost at all without payment to the previous owner. How would you like to have thousands of names to sell each and every month without spending a penny for them plus you can keep the really good ones!

* Add an infinite number of new extensions giving registrars land rush sales and auctions from here until domainers figure out that owning 'Sex.goop' may really not be that big of a deal (and with new suckers coming in all the time, that may never happen!). This will likely cause user confusion and diminish the value of many (if not most) existing domains.

* Look the other way on domain tasting until they finally figured out that a little something had to be done after most everything worth tasting has been tasted 100 times over. You would think that they would have a little more control over the registries who you would think would have wanted to at least make some money on this process. Then again, there may be more collusion on some level here.

* Allow registrars and registries to hold (warehousing) better domains without seemingly even cosmetically renewing them. ICANN is looking at prohibiting this practice but they don't even have a definition of what warehousing is. They'll probably decide that no registrar can own more than 10,000 HDTV sets or tennis shoes at any one time should that prohibit whatever they define 'warehousing' to be. This also applies to registrars keeping domains in general as addressed above too.

* Allow registries to increase their fees yearly for the next few years (the matter addressed here isn't new). What exact costs are involved on a per name basis with regard to operating a regsitry? If there was much involved, surely the registries wouldn't allow unabated tasting!

Originally ICANN was to have a board with 50% internet users (us) and 50% business people. After about a year or two, the 50% users part was truly kicked out and it became, pretty much, 100% business people. That's when he problems started, I believe. This business has few checks and balances and that's bad. Inside trading and other unethical (by most normal standards) are the norm in this business due to ICANN's very weak and limited regulation. Unfortunately, as I see it, ICANN seems to be a major part of the problem.

[MacyT.]

For how many years now have the fees been going up?

What is their reasoning for it? It's getting ridiculous.

[Domainster]

The step-up in regisrty pricing is cleary unwarranted.......
So many other Web/Internet costs and expenses have dropped over the years ....for such items as web Hosting, web development, online storage, ... etc.

Domain base/wholesale prices should have been dropping too -- NOT INCREASING !

The prices increases certainly do have a strong & stinky smell of monopolistic practices and "collusion".

Plain and Simple !

A class action suit in the forseeable would not be a surprise at all !!!

[mkellerman]

See:

Internet Commerce Association - ICA
The voice of commerce and entrepreneurship in Internet Governance.
www.internetcommerce.org/

This organization has been set up to help.

[GAMEFINEST]

It's going to hurt domainers with large portfolios..

[actnow]

I'm sure the increased fees are justified.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have initiated them.

Maybe, their cost for electricity and travel cost went up.
And, maybe they needed to give ALL of their employees a raise.

I'm sure they wouldn't increase fees just to add profit to the bottom line.