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

[Riad S. Wahby]

I am a .org registrant (not-for-profit).

With the proposed policy changes for .org domains, ICANN is failing to
recognize the difference between a legacy extension created with the
support of the US government---which predates the existence of ICANN
and that has millions of existing users---and brand-new extensions
that started off with a new set of rules, no price controls, and no
existing registrants. Legacy TLDs 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. This would likely have the effect of destroying
important parts of the World Wide Web's history. What would happen,
for example, if archive.org were priced out of their domain? This
would be an unequivocal disaster, the responsibility for which would
fall squarely on ICANN.

The Uniform Rapid Suspension policy is too new and untested to apply
on domain names that may be 20 years old or more. With the URS, the
domain names could be taken down in a matter of days with little
notice.

ICANN should be doing more to protect owners of .org domain names. Why
is ICANN trying to remove price protections for .org domain
owners---many of which are non- or not-for-profits?

Please do not break the .org registry. This would be a huge,
unrecoverable mistake.

Best regards,

-=rsw