[Comments-info-renewal-18mar19] Comment on updated registry agreement with .INFO operator

Philip Gladstone philip at gladstonefamily.net
Mon Apr 29 20:23:40 UTC 2019


The big reason for using the legacy TLDs was (and still is) the 
predictability in future costs of domain registration and renewal. As a 
registrant in .INFO, I object to any change in the agreements with the 
registry operator that would allow them to increase prices arbitrarily. 
I have spent many years building up my website and its associated name 
and will essentially be held hostage if the .INFO operator increases 
prices arbitrarily.

The amount of revenue to be extracted from .INFO is probably maximized 
by increasing prices significantly -- even though there would be *no* 
new registrations. It is a lot easier to multiply prices by a factor of 
10, rather than increase the number of domains registered by (more than) 
a factor of 10. It also isn't obvious to me that this wouldn't allow 
prices to be increased based on the (say) Alexa rank of the domain name. 
Maybe just set the price for a top 100 Alex website to $1MM/yr and the 
operator wouldn't lose many of those customers.

Also, it isn't clear *why* ICANN is proposing this change -- it feels 
like a giveaway to the existing operators who did *nothing* to create 
the value of the TLD, but just operated the TLD on behalf of ICANN (and 
the legacy TLDs predate ICANN itself). This is different from the new 
gTLDs where the applicant is creating the value for themselves.

How much *value* does ICANN think is being transferred to the INFO 
operator though this change, and how much did the .INFO operator have to 
give to ICANN (or its staff) to get this reward?

Philip Gladstone




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