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The
specter of tiered domain pricing has reared its
ugly head again.
Most will remember a major battle two
years ago when the prospect of ICANN
allowing Verisign to charge varying |
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prices for domain
name registrations and renewals (based on how much
they alone thought the individual domains were
worth) caused an uproar in the domain
community. Verisign already uses that model with
the .tv registry (which they administer
under an agreement with the island of Tuvalu).
Many blame that pricing scheme for stunting the
potential growth of .tv, so when the possibility
of variable pricing was raised when the .biz/.info/.org
contracts came up for renewal two years ago the
domain community rose up in arms and stopped
it.
The impetus for the
revolt was the knowledge that if those registries
were allowed to implement variable pricing then
Verisign would also be allowed to do it with the
popular .com |
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and .net
registries they operate - potentially leaving
millions of website owners to face massive renewal
bills for their domains if Verisign chose to up the
tab on them at whatever rate they wished. |
The 2006 brouhaha was
triggered when veteran domainer and long-time ICANN
watcher (and Business Constituency member) George
Kirikos spotted dangerous language in the
proposed .biz/.info/.org contracts and sounded the
alarm. Now, in contracts that are being proposed for the
new gTLDs that ICANN plans to start rolling out next year,
Kirikos has again found a variable pricing trojan horse
lurking in the contract language. If it slips through, all
of the existing registries could again be in danger of
being infected with the same virus. Kirikos first called
attention to the new problem with a post
at Circle ID October 24 and he has since
brought it to the domain community's attention with forum
threads detailing the issues at DNForum.com
and DomainState.com.
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ICANN opened a public
commentary window to support or oppose the new
contracts on October 24 and in typical ICANN
fashion that window will close very quickly
- on December 8. Kirikos is rightfully
alarmed that few protests have been posted on the
public commentary site to date. As they did two
years ago, every domain owner needs to make their
opposition to variable pricing known now. Instructions
for posting your comments can be found on this
page at the ICANN site. You
can also join the discussions at DNForum and/or
DomainState to get answers and discuss strategy
with fellow domain owners. |
It
seems like domain owners are facing threats and challenges
on every side these days, from the Snowe Bill
(which, though derailed this year, is expected to reappear
in new clothes next year) to the Kentucky
government trying to claim the right to confiscate domain
names. Another hot button issue is registrars competing
with their own customers in the expired domain market,
or in some cases (as with registrar Tucows.com's
new YummyNames sales site), refusing to compete -
instead sidestepping the entire competitive drop process
and just keeping domains that expire at their registrar
for themselves and selling them to the highest bigger. In
conflict of interest scenarios like this, registrars have
an incentive to make sure their customers do not
renew their domain names.
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A
backlash to this trend is developing, manifested
again yesterday when the World
Association of Domain Name Developers
(the organization that stages the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conferences) stripped Tucows of the organization's
Registrar Seal of Approval that was awarded
to Tucows in the fall of 2007. That announcement
came on the heels of a press
release from Tucows yesterday announcing
they were laying off approximately 15% of
their staff. Perhaps income from selling off their
customer's expired domains will help improve |
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their
financial situation but there is a question
whether or not the benefits from doing that will
be offset by a loss of business from domain
registrants who are unhappy with the company's
current direction.
(Posted Nov.
12,
2008) |
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