[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement

[Ryan Pugatch]

I am a .org registrant. 

ICANN does not seem to recognize the difference between a legacy extension created with the support of the US government, that predates the existence of ICANN and that has millions of existing users and the brand new extensions that started off with a new set of rules, in particular no price controls, and no existing registrants. They have completely different characteristics, history, and ownership structure. It is not acceptable for ICANN to ignore these differences and to propose that they be treated the same.

Removing price caps is not fair to .org domain owners. Many of them have websites that they have used for years. If price caps are removed, the cost to renew their domain names may become too expensive, and they could be forced to give up websites that are important to them.

ICANN should be doing more to protect owners of .org domain names. Why is ICANN trying to remove price protections for .org domain owners, so many of which are non-profits, so that they can be overcharged for their domain names?

Given that a domain registry is a monopoly for a specific TLD, the governing authority, ICANN, should prevent the registries in check with the amount they are able to increase registration fees. Since a domain is the identity of an organization, it is unreasonable to expect that an organization would be able to simply change domains to another TLD with another registry in the event of an increase.