[Comments-net-renewal-20apr17] Opposition to Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement

[Concerned Anonymous Registrar]

We strongly oppose the Renewal of the .NET Registry Agreement.



When ICANN was first created, one of its most important goals was to break
up the Verisign/Network Solutions monopoly. We believe it has failed to do
this as both .com and .net are still controlled by that same monopoly.



ICANN created the registrar system, but no competition at the registry
level. While registrar prices have dropped dramatically and stayed low,
registry prices have consistently increased for no reason even as registry
costs have declined.



Having a separate contracted entity for each TLD, in this case
.NET/Verisign, serves no purpose other than to hand a monopoly to that
entity - with no competition - so they can collect an ever increasing
annuity (due to decreasing costs and guaranteed price increases in the
contract with ICANN) for no actual work since ICANN's multi-stake-holder
model creates all the policies. This separate registry entity serves no
purpose and is not adding any value to the domain ecosystem or registrants.
Outsourced registry services by large registry providers can be had for
less than $2 per domain per year.



It is our belief that ICANN should take back all GTLDs (.com, .net, new
GTLDs, etc.) and outsource the registry function to the many available
registry providers at a significantly reduced cost. It can routinely bid
out contracts for registry services and even balance load across multiple
providers thereby increasing operational resiliency of the TLD. This would
significantly simplify the ICANN operating model, would decrease ICANN's
footprint, increase the GTLD's stability and resiliency, and would bring
competition in pricing for GTLD registry services.



Please focus on domain registrants first.



In addition to the registry pricing and competition issue, ICANN has done
nothing on whois privacy for registrants. Instead, it has launched several
initiates to force domains offline for inaccurate/outdated contact
information even while this pubic information remains greatly abused by
spammers and phishers. Some registrars offer their own whois privacy proxy
services whereby they list themselves as the public owner of the domain. We
believe privacy and audited access should be built into whois and not by
the individual registrars that may have different policies and access
control. We insist every employee at ICANN be required to own a domain name
without registrar whois privacy (since ICANN requires the actual owner to
be listed) and across several registrars. Once every ICANN employee feels
the pain of having their personal / home contact details published publicly
and the rampant abuse of it, they will not need multi-year expensive
studies to measure this abuse. Please fix the massive abuse of the whois
system and lack of privacy.



To bring it back to the main point of this message, ICANN must not renew
the Verisign .NET registry contract as it is not in the best interests of
domain registrants or the public good. ICANN must introduce competition at
the registry level. A suggestion for this has been offered above.



Sincerely,

A concerned anonymous registrar on behalf of its registrants



Posted anonymously to avoid potential business ramifications as a result of
current registry monopolies.
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