After a comment period which drew feedback from thousands of people and organizations that opposed the removal of price caps for the .org registry, ICANN announced that the .org registry agreement was renewed. ICANN released this news during its ICANN65 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco last night.
Here’s an excerpt from the news bulletin from ICANN:
The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) will be hosting a public webcast on April 12th at 1pm EDT to share and discuss the ICA’s policy positions and interests. The webcast is open to ICA members as well as the general public interested in learning more about the ICA and the organization’s objectives.
The ICA is a trade organization that advocates for the rights and interests of domain name registrants. Many domain investors and industry service providers are members of the ICA.
According to the ICA email I received announcing the webcast, here are some of the topics that will be covered:
The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) has announced that the winner of the 2019 Lonnie Borck Memorial Award is industry attorney John Berryhill. John is regarded as one of the absolute best domain industry attorneys, and I think he is deserving of the award. In fact, I am quite sure I was not alone when I nominated John to receive this award.
For many years, John has represented and advised domain name owners in UDRPs, litigation, legal disputes, and other matters involving domain names. John’s insight and intelligence is almost always accompanied by his humor and wit (except at 3:45am on day 2 of the Pan-Mass Challenge). In addition to the exemplary legal work he does on behalf of his clients, John has regularly shared his legal advice on domain forums, often to people who might otherwise not be able to afford his legal expertise.
The Internet Commerce Association will be hosting or participating in several events and panels during the upcoming NamesCon conference in Las Vegas. Most notably, the ICA will host its annual dinner at the House of Blues restaurant, the B Side lounge at Mandalay Place. Tickets to the dinner are still available to purchase via EventBrite.
Here is a list of public events the ICA is either hosting or participating in during the conference, with the notable exception being the member meeting on Monday:
The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) will be hosting its annual dinner during the NamesCon conference in Las Vegas. The ICA dinner will be held at the House of Blues restaurant, the B Side lounge at Mandalay Place on Monday, January 28th at 6pm.
The annual ICA dinner was started as a way for ICA members to meet and to get to know each other. I believe there will be one or two members of the ICA board who will briefly speak during the event to give an update on ICA initiatives. Some ICA members include Sedo, Escrow.com, GoDaddy, NameBright, and quite a few other companies that are in the domain investment business.
Dinner attendees do not need to be NamesCon conference attendees, so people are invited to purchase tickets for industry friends, significant others, or others who want to support the ICA. In addition
Verisign and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently reached a deal that will allow Verisign to raise the price on .com domain name registrations (and renewals). The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) which represents the interests of domain investors and domain industry companies, had previously organized a campaign in opposition of the price increase. The campaign included a Change.org petition, which achieved over 2,300 signatures of support.
Shortly after the agreement between Verisign and the NTIA was announced, Verisign published a concerning article, which, in my view, seemed to mischaracterize domain investors and domain investing. The blog post referred to domain speculation as “domain scalping.” The company seems to have called out industry leaders GoDaddy and HugeDomains in the article. The sentence I found most concerning was this one that called into question the business of domain investing:
