[Comments-org-renewal-18mar19] Org domains

[Ivan Perez]

Dear ICANN,

It has come to our attention that you are proposing to remove the price 
cap on .org, .biz and .info domains.

As the owner of several .org domain names, I believe this is a bad idea, 
for a number of reasons.

- By removing the cap, you are essentially opening the door to arbitrary 
price increases. This affects our ability to plan and invest in domain 
names as the way for our customers and our community to find us, since 
we have zero reliability on being able to afford them the next year.

- In principle, in a free market with abundance of parties, we should 
see an improvement in technology that would drive the prices down. 
However, when there are only a limited number of players that actually 
set those prices (as most "domain registrars" are actually just 
resellers and do not decide on the prices), this only stagnates the 
prices. It happens in broadband services, it has been happening in 
domain names. The prices have been steady for years, and not gone down.

- Domain names are a tool that help customers reach us. However, almost 
since domain names began to be registered, they have become a product on 
their own. We have domains that are extremely relevant to our business, 
being locked by a third party that is not using them. If the price cap 
is removed, domain names will become more of an object of trade, which 
will block them for longer.

Please, reconsider your position, and keep the price cap. Instead of 
making this change, please consider addressing the issues outlined above.

Thanks and best wishes,

Ivan Perez

-- Founder @ Keera Studios