ICA Lambasts ICANN After .Org Price Caps Removed

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:

“In connection with the renewal of the .org Registry Agreement, ICANN and Public Interest Registry have agreed to implement the incorporation of unique legacy-related terms of .org through an “Addendum” to the Registry Agreement. The Addendum will amend the terms of the .org Registry Agreement. Where the Addendum provides for a different formulation of a provision, the provision in the Addendum will control. Similarly, where the Addendum states that a provision will have “no force or effect”, the referenced provision in the Registry Agreement will be considered not applicable. The terms of the Addendum will not be affected by future global amendments under Sections 7.6 or 7.7 of the existing Base gTLD Registry Agreement, which will enable future global amendments to proceed while preserving the unique terms applicable to the .org TLD. If an amendment is approved under Sections 7.6 or 7.7 that would amend or modify any terms of the .org Registry Agreement that are modified by the Addendum, ICANN and Public Interest Registry have agreed in the Addendum to (i) enter into good faith discussions regarding whether an amendment to the Addendum is appropriate in light of the global amendment and (ii) mutually agree on an appropriate amendment to the Addendum of the .org Registry Agreement.”

Shortly after the announcement was published, the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), which had advocated against the removal of price caps, published a fiery blog post about the decision:

“The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) is profoundly disturbed by ICANN’s decision to remove price caps on .org domain names despite the groundswell of opposition from stakeholders.”

The ICA lambasted ICANN for this:

“Apparently the ICANN Board allowed ICANN Staff to proceed to execute the renewal agreement without any concern over registrant interests, despite the ICA bringing this issue directly to its attention. The decision to ignore ICANN stakeholders in apparent total disregard for its self-professed “bottom-up multi-stakeholder model” is of great concern and calls into question ICANN’s ability to govern the domain name system in the public interest.”

It remains to be seen if PIR, the operator of the .org registry, will end up raising prices or not. Should it choose do so beyond the occasional relatively small increment, I am sure there will be further outcry from registrants.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

5 COMMENTS

  1. People should see the comments here too:

    https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/30/domain-overseer-lifts-all-price-caps-on-org-domain-names/#comments.

    They have to be straight up delusional and living in an alternate reality and universe to think this “decision” contains even the remotest trace of not being utterly evil.

    And no, I’m not just saying that because it coincides with my own interests. I would also point out as I have before that I am primarily an end user, not primarily a domainer or domain investor. I’m primarily an end user whose business activity includes using hundreds of domains. Seeking to sell is something I barely even pay attention to at all, though I do have a number listed and would certainly love to make a few good sales.

    To restate the obvious long known truth, legacy TLDs are categorically different and are a PUBLIC TRUST, which I am not alone in saying before. People have invested years of their lives and countless resources in reliance upon that common sense reality. When “they” deny this, which is what they have done by their actions, among other things, they are lying through and through, just as the argument about why this was even done lacked all credibility to begin with as well.

    Just as the public is usually lied into various wars to benefit the few, that is what is now going on with the Internet and domain name system. It is one of the biggest steps we have ever witnessed now toward the beginning of the end.

    • Or maybe they do know how utterly evil it is and just don’t care. That happens too. Like the latest push to start more never ending wars.

  2. Breaking: U.S. Gov Grants Verisign .Com Price Hikes
    BY ANDREW ALLEMANN — NOVEMBER 1, 2018 UNCATEGORIZED 46 COMMENTS

    Major .com price hikes could be coming.

    The U.S. Government has extended its Cooperative Agreement with Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) for managing the .com domain name. The deal will allow Verisign to negotiate with ICANN to raise the price of .com by 7% in each of the last four years of each six-year .com contract.

    Verisign released this statement:

    https://domainnamewire.com/2018/11/01/breaking-u-s-gov-grants-verisign-com-price-hikes/

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