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ICANN OKs Tiered Pricing for .org/.biz/.info
wayne writes "As reported on CircleID, Vint Cerf has confirmed that ICANN's new contracts for the .org/.biz/.info domain prices can be tiered, so that google.biz could cost $1 million per year, while sex.biz could cost $100,000/year. This is very similar to how the .tv TLD already works. The domain registrar could also could also use pricing for political purposes, claiming that pricing sex.biz high would be to 'protect the children,' while icann.org could be priced at $1/year. Verisign's contract for .com and .net have recently been renewed, so those domains are safe for now, but I'm sure they would want similar treatment."
Shouldn't these be non-profit, or at the most, low-profit? Shouldn't ICANN only be charging enough to keep themselves running as is? How much are they going to be making off this? Is this kind of thing really necessary?
The word google meant nothing (I know there are other views). And now some other organization should cash in? What are googles options here?
1. Pay and redirecto to google.com
2. Don't pay, someone else will, can google then sue for trademark infringement?
Let the
Warhammer forums
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, that's it. Well, no, it's broken, and it has been for a long time (VeriSign's wildcards on TLDs and THEN renewal of their contract, IDN, and much, much more). I don't see the US relinquishing ICANN's control to UN's ITU, but if it ever happens, I will have a few beers (not that I need a reason).
Why would they permit this? Icann.org current registration expires in 2011, however if PIR act now we can have poetic justice by 2017 when the icann.org domain renewal costs $15billion/y.
;-)
Come on PIR, Icann't object to tasting their own dog food
Either the domain registrars will make the money or domain squatters will. Choose.
Personally I reckon they should auction names rather than selling them at a flat rate.
Deleted
What's the justification on this?
They are cashing in on the efforts of successful companies without any hard work of their own. It takes just as long to register one domain as another, and yet the apparent worth will be altered to fit the pockets of the current owners as to maximise revenue. This is naked greed and nothing else.
I can see two reasons for doing this:
.. fair enough, if the registrar wants to 'auction' domains they should be able to, but as the article states they'd never get any real money from it because of the 6 month notice period. If the site then becomes popular over the 10 year period then it's effectively just..
..ransoming companies running sites on already popular domains such as gamesindustry.biz into paying a lot in 10 years time because they're successful today.
.. so they're just cashing in on percieved value. I suppose it depends on whether you consider your money is going toward paying for the domain name itself like a physical product, or going toward paying for the service of registering a domain name. I'm in the latter group .. I don't see it as 'buying' the domain, just paying for access to the registry.
1. To push the price of unregistered domains up
2.
Doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Besides, the registrar doesn't actually do any more work registering sex.org than registering IwantApurpleMonkey.biz
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It has nothing to do with right or wrong, it only has to do with supply and demand, if it isn't worth it to them, then they won't pay.
Deleted
There isn't anything to prevent a register from taxing the hell out of any website that gets popular. This ammounts to extortion by registers not being banned. The internet community will not stand for it and the offical DNS servers will cease to be recognized as such. Instead ICANN will be religated to it's own TLD. This can both be done at a user and register level. www.slashdot.org.icann It's how TLD DNS should work, with mapping to whom you recognize as the authority.
The domain registrar could also could also use pricing for political purposes, claiming that pricing sex.biz high would be to 'protect the children,' while icann.org could be priced at $1/year.
so does a repetition means an indication of desperation to attract political interest in least non-political issue :)
-- "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - TAE --
Because they can! They own the TLDs uncontested, they can charge whatever they think the market will bear for service that had been decently regulated until that time.
Pretty much the same thing threatens net neutrality: because they can claim to be a part of it, telcos have a justification to charge for cross-traffic. It flies in the face of the equal-peerage internet that was the original intent, but there it is.
So? That's what makes their plan so brilliant. Companies are always seeking to increase profits and eliminate costs, to the point where they can spend nothing and do nothing but rake in the dough and brainstorm how to rake in more dough. It's morally bankrupt and ethically bereft, but as long as the actions are legal, such things are of little concern to the successful modern businessman.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
This is essentially network non-neutrality in other clothing. Registrants would be charged based on content or popularity, rather than by the actual level of resources provided by the registrar that are consumed by the registrant.
The only thing that makes traditional network non-neutrality more insidious is that the companies trying to impose non-neutrality want to do so because they have a product in competition with the companies they want to charge out the nose for access.
How to make money as a domain name person (whatever they call them...) 1. Let them start cheap. 2. There is no 2 we know of. 3. Gouge them once they are set up and their domains worth something. 4. Profit!
Great Intellect...
What would that cost? Those perverted LaTeX users.
What a load of shite! Why should someone with lots of money pay for the same service that someone with little money can get? Sounds like the idea of someone that wants to get rich off someone elses work without having to work hard themselves. Pay rises all round for everyone at ICANN?
I can see the death of ICANN as a result, with the governments of the world uniting to create an alternate DNS and making whan ICANN does irrelevant forever.
ok, maybe not. But I can dream can't I? How do I get a job at ICANN?
Look at license plates. You want "STALLION" on the back of your car, you pay extra. Fair 'nough. Problem is there seems to be a competition in money making schemes. Just look at the use of international characters. If you register citib ä nk.com, what the fuck are you going to use that for? Skandinavian characters should only be allowed in scandinavian TLD's. Period. And if the Danes allow spelling ø as oe then føbar.dk and foebar.dk should point to the same IP adress. ALWAYS. Any other behaviour is misguiding the public as part of a grab-the-money-and-run scheme. If you have "google" in your adres, you claim to be part of Google. Google paid for its own name, and nobady else should make money on that.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
pay next year for the same price.
Well at least my kneecaps are safe.
So now ICANN has legalised domain name extortion.
What the hell happened to the fundamentals of a domain name representing a company or organisation, or even an individual?
Is there an way to defy ICANN?
-----
Sig Sauer
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
...Registrars are. How about that. ICANN decides that registrars can exploit their power to shape the content of the web or make the more successful pay more for their domain. How arrogant and bold. My bet is that these three TLD's are a test bed to see how well the public receives this crap. If it goes without much outcry, then they'll throw in the big dog domains .com and .net. This type of behavior shouldn't go unpunished.
One day the toilets of the world will rise up... And I'm going to nuke them.
And everything to do with economics. Money never has. It's simply a commodity which allows the exchanging value between two parties. You are particularly naive to try to attribute morals or ethics to money.
If you don't want to pay the price, if you object, then bugger off elsewhere you'll fine cheaper domain names. It's how markets work.
Deleted
I suppose that's the true vision of free markets by the Bush goverment:
You are free to buy, but not to compete.
The majority, most of the people out there see it as ownership of the name, or at least the right to use it.
Deleted
$.05 USD if I like you (category 1).
$1000 USD if I don't (category 2).
If my post gets popular, my price for reading this post will jump to $100 in category 1 and $10,000 in category 2.
FLR
just point your DNS resolution to my dns server.
:)
you can be on our darker-net in no time.
www.microsoft.com / www.nasa.gov / and a few others
are still available!
by the way: www.pr0n.net DOES point to pr0n here
all the other "real" addresses also work, but u have to add
"xyz" before, so "www.xyzmicrosoft.com" does point to
the "real" microsoft.
This doesn't change a thing to the fact that .info and .biz has no necessity further than racketing trademark holders who have to "defend and enforce" their trademarks.
Can anyone say "Monopoly?" How about "AntiTrust"? Do those terms apply to such an organization?
:T:R:A:N:S:
It's time for Google to put their 'information available to everyone' and 'do no evil' mantra to work here. Build some DNS infrastructure, and start their own DNS system ending in .google, or maybe .fuckicann.
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot. Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
I've had google based Usenet posters tell me there's nothing wrong with them posting anything they want on "their" Google Groups.
What would stop someone from transfering their tier-priced/abused domain to another registrar?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
My impression is that there's multiple registrars that can sell all domains, and you can freely transfer ownership between them. So say you owned pussy.org with Network Solutions and they suddenly got bought out by Jerry Fallwell and he decides to charge 1 billion dollars/year for pussy.org because he hates uhh... cats. What's to prevent you from transfering the domain over the goDaddy before the domain expires? They then charge you the same $12 a year (or whatever they normally charge)? Unless all the registrars collude on certain domains, I don't see how it's possible for a single registrar to hold people hostage.
AccountKiller
Looks like lot of wrong people out there are in power, and are out to extort money. What has the world come to? First there was internet as tubes comic strip, then there was somebody who came up with a brilliant plan of charging for e-mails (supposedly to prevent scam! duh!!) and now ICANN wants to charge these insane amounts of money...
These incompetents dont see how to make money by innovation and thus they resort to bullying.
Taxing businesses unnecessarily is the surest way to kill the market place.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
So, should the board in charge of zoning for a particular city be able to charge certain people more for licenses because of the name of their companies? I'm pretty damn sure we'd see every corporation active today screaming fire if something like that came up. Seems to me that we're heading in completely the wrong direction when it comes to regulation and business interacting with technology; everyone with money and power is trying to exploit the inexperience of various legislative bodies when it comes to newfangled things like software patents and the internet.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
If they really want to protect the children, they can deep six the porn domain altogether.
Ad Astra Per Asper
One nice thing is that we can always create an alternate DNS-like service if we get too pissed off at ICANN. Not that it would be easy, but we're not entirely held hostage.
We could do any of the following:
A) Create a parallel infrastructure that uses DNS still, but that has an alternate set of servers.
B) Do something similar to what TinyUrl does: Hang our own infrastrucutre off of the current one. For instance, we register just one name such as z.com, then all names in the replacement service end in ".z.com"
C) In the most extreme case, we add new name resolution APIs to the popular operating systems, permitting us to go with a name resolution system that has a significantly different structure than DNS does.
Where should I send to get icann.org for 100 years???
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
OK, so if I'm reading this correctly....If my current registrar wanted to, they could decide to charge me $1000/year to renew forbis.org, my "vanity" domain name. Assuming no collusion between registrars, I would then be compelled to shop for a different registrar, one of which would likely want to offer me a low price, comparable to what I'm currently paying, knowing that it's basically free money for them.
As annoying as this seems to me, it seems like the only hassle for a non-profit like myself who has no incentive to keep the domain name (other than the fact that it is my name) would be in shopping registrars for a better price. My current registrar may want to try to price-gouge me in hopes that I don't know enough to find a new registrar, but a competing registrar would be more likely to try to attract my business.
Is this about right? Am I missing something here?
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
There should be some sort of way to report squatters to ICANN or such; that's one of the biggest annoyances I have on the Internet; fuck squatters and their tricky ways of getting new cars.
.org domain - I think ICANN would charge them a larger sum of money than they would a small business they never heard of - even if it was for the same domain.
On topic to the article, I think that there should be more uniformity instead of a "we'll decide the price on what we think is right." Reason being is let's say Walt Disney wishes to purchase a
Is ICANN really still a non-profit organization?
Traditional economics doesn't come into play when corrupt organizations worm their way into a position that gives them a right to practically print money.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Google has the brightest people and the technology.
Could Google redesign DNS and move it to a more neutral platform? I'm sure they could.
If Google handles this right, Google becomes the new center for DNS and ICANN is abandoned when they start ratcheting up the prices.
At the very least the threat from Google keeps ICANN from changing their pricing structure.
With all the fuss over "Net Neutrality" how in the heck does ICANN think they can do something like this? First they screwed over the small registrars through rate increases and vote weighing, then they dropped the .xxx from the last agenda (something pretty much everyone in the world wanted with the exception of bush and friends), Then the IANA contract renewal without so much as discussion, and there have already many decisions made favoring big business and less than neutral positions. Its really past time for ICANN reform or dismissal. So ICANN can regluate the internet but who regulates ICANN? ICANN should be replaced with an ELECTED international governing body.
Domains can be priced due to political reasons? The example given is sex.com (which points out to just how far into the weeds this country has gotten).
What about the political parties? What's to keep a registrar from saying Republican domains can be registered for $10/year, but Democrat domains will cost $100/year? We might think that no shareholders would stand for this, but rogue corporate management is no longer rare. (They have to have annual meetings? Sure, on the second week in January in Fargo, North Dakota, and stockholder questions will only be accepted for two hours. Answers not guaranteed.)
That might be too naked, but you could easily have subtle biases. The two major parties get "preferred rates" since they buy so many domains. Third-parties and upstart challengers get higher rates. BushSucks type sites get the highest rates. Subtle, but real, pressure against change.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Let's say you have a company based in Sweden with non-English characters in its name. If they do business internationally, should they be limited to only registering their name in Sweden? Or should they be allowed to register the .com address?
I think "US government" refers to the Federal government. Most on your list is controlled by state or local governments, or should be. For just one instance, there's no need for a federal department of education. You could eliminate that entire bureaucracy. Military-we aren't supposed to have a perpetual large standing Army, especally one used in non defensive interventionist wars. The fathers were especially critical of that idea, saying it would lead to despotism. Police/firemen, etc,are local issues for the most part. We don't need near three dozen federal police agencies (yes, there are almost that many). Sewage/garbage/infrastructure, etc, local for the most part.
I think it's rather easy to see how disfunctional the federal government has become, they have exclusive control over one small basically urban area, DC. Can they run even that? Always been a mess near as I can see.
We are supposed to have by design a federation of 50 near completely soverign States, and the Federal government was severely restricted in the beginning, now they operate on a default everything under the sun is their business, they assume all rights, well beyond their lawful powers, they assume the only rights you have are the ones they grant, and seem all too eager to take those away completely and restrict the rest whenever they feel like it.
Yes, the Feds could get by on much less cash, we would need to return to Constitutional governmnet, not this mishmash of government by federal executive branch decree and laws (and lawmakers) bought by transnational corporations.
I am concerned about this because it allows them to jack up my cost if I should post something they don't like.
for example:
You have 10 days to remove your link at xxxxxxxxx.info/icann_sucks.html (fake link for arguments sake)or we will raise your registration fees one billion percent.
regards ICAAN
that is all
Step right up folks and watch as the wealthy pervert our public places.
Welcome to the plutocracy.
So let me get this right, I built a .org site that gets over 1.2 million hits a month. I make nothing from it and it essentially cost me money. Other people find the site valuable, so I continue to shell out the cash to keep it running.
.org domain requires me to pay more then about 100$ at renewal time then I will simply roll over and give it up.
- 28jul06.htm
So ICANN wants to make it so that the register price my domain at what ever they want. So when when my domain comes up for renewal the registar could look at the stats on my site and decide to price the domain at some crazy amount. Essentially they can use my hardwork and effort against me to price me right out off the internet. If my
The only thing protecting me is competition between registries, and the hope that they don't collude to fix prices.
You can send ICANN feedback regarding their proposed contracts:
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2
But you must do so by monday.
They will certainly hear from me.
Step 1: Teir registration of domains.
Step 2: Goggle buys Verisign.
Step 3: Google designs a system whereby the cost of the domain is related to the pagerank.
Step 4: Profit!
You will be baked, and there will be cake.
The title for this article is misleading. The article says that the contract that ICANN signed does not prohibit tiered pricing, but nowhere in the article does it say that this will be implemented by Verisign or other registries. So let's cool down for a second and act rationally. The article is basically the author thinking out loud about what this could lead to, not what is certain to happen.
You want "STALLION" on the back of your car, you pay extra.
That's not a good analogy... there's no equivalent to a "non-vanity" license plate in the domain name world.. they are all "STALLIONs" so to speak...
Is it just a coincidence that this comes out a mere 9 days after ICANN gets its contract renewed?
I wonder why they didn't announce this last month?
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
The biggest problem with this idea is that the value of the domain name will be dependent on how much the website is worth that is using it. Since they can change the price year to year.
How much was the domain name flickr worth a few years ago, or how about digg, or youtube. Not very much in the setup they are talking about. But take a misspelled domain, and make the site worth millions (billions?) and now you can use extortion to the site owners to pay large amounts of money for the domain name they created value for, otherwise they lose the site.
TruePunk | Games
I would have no problem with it if it was implemented in an entirely technical way with no human interaction...
If domains were priced based on the number of times information about that domain was requested from the registrar in the prior year, it would make the popular domains cost more and the vast majority of domains cost less. There would have to be fraud measures put in place, of course...such as counting only requests from hosts with a valid reverse DNS entry and limiting the number of counted requests from any one host, etc.
But why shouldn't the domains that use more of the registrars resources be charged a higher rate? Why shouldn't Google pay $1000/year while onlyformyemailaddress.org costs a few bucks less?
However as soon as humans get involved in determining pricing on an individual basis, this becomes an awful idea.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
That's a great idea... IF YOU WANT THE INTERNET TO BECOME JUST MORE OF WHAT WE HAVE ON TV.
That's what you get when you auction everything off to the highest bidder. The already rich companies own everything, and noone else gets a chance.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If you have "google" in your adres, you claim to be part of Google. Google paid for its own name, and nobady else should make money on that.
y NicePeople.org"? :-)
What if I want to register "www.IDontClaimToBePartOfGoogleButImSureTheyreVer
I am looking for a different internet to play/work on - could somebody please FORK this thing before IPv6 is implemented.
I always thought the Internet was defined by a static IP address, a full stack of ports, a neutral network of access between nodes, and unbiased domain and number registrars. Have I been lied to again?
Why isn't it consumer fraud to call AOL level service the Internet? Since all the small ISPs are being driven out of business by the FCC, may I suggest a coalition for an ethical internet?
not happy, very not happy.
yeah, bad analogy there in the beginning. Everyone who gets a vanity plate through a particular state's DMV pays the same flat fee - you don't get charged exponentially more money based on how "desirable" or "cool" your vanity plate is.
Also, what about anti-sites, like (hypothetically) "www.trustgooglenomore.org" or "fuckmicrosoft.com" ? That's a free speech issue, there. You can't give google or MS a claim to those sites if they're being used for criticism or dissemination of information the company may not like.
I was the author of the CircleID article, and had submitted a slightly less technical version on Slashdot on Wednesday evening. It got rejected within 10 minutes. :) But, thankfully one can't keep a newsworthy story down, and there's coverage all over the place now.
Please do post your comments to the official ICANN comments archive. ICANN will send you an email to authenticate your email address, so you'll need to click the link in that email for it to be confirmed (otherwise, your comments won't show up in the archives, but will instead be junked as spam).
ICANN wouldn't be reaping profits. Verisign et al would be.
.com/.net, then they biatch about that, so we start bringing market forces to the domain registries. This is just another step down that path. No big surprise.
So the "ICANN SUXX0RZZ!!!" troop biatches, pisses and moans about the monopoly of the original Internic, so we got NetSol's effective monopoly of
I am so sick of the 'protect the children' arguments. If people do want to protect the children, they would ensure the world they are growing up in is clean -- http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans -series,0,7842752.special
So, let's say someone actually shells out 100K/year for sex.biz and puts a porn site up. How will that 'protect the children,' then? It's nothing more than a flimsy argument that makes a person/company/entity sound like they actually care.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
I keep hoping that one of the domains will have tiered pricing based on desirability of the name.
By this, I mean charging a premium price for:
Short domain names
Dictionary words
Other desirable factors (no numbers, no punctuation, etc.?)
I often wonder why the powers that be do not put a premium price on the "good" domains. You don't need to learn combinatorial theory in order to see that the very short domain names (3 letters, etc.) are few and far between, and in high demand.
For instance:
1-letter names = Not allowed, by stupid administrative policy, although a few are grandfathered (q.com)
2-letter names = Not allowed, by stupid administrative policy, although a few are grandfathered (xe.com)
3-letter names = $10,000/year
4-letter names = $500/year
5-letter names = $25/year
Longer names that are dictionary words = $15/year
Longer names that are not dictionary words = $5/year
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
"Is it just a coincidence that this comes out a mere 9 days after ICANN gets its contract renewed?"
No.
icann has proven to be very crafty and there are no coincidences with things like this.
It's also no coincidence this came out on a friday. The story ages over the weekend and by monday mainstream reporters have forgotten about it.
Information icann wants out comes out early in the week.
Need Mercedes parts ?
So, effectivly, what you are saying is that if I go to a sign company and say I want a sign that says "Microsoft" it'll cost me thousands of dollars, but the same sign that says "Bob's Pizza", is only $5. Maybe the price that it costs to incorporate a company should be based on it's name or size too. This is such a huge steaming pile of crap!
That's a nice website name you have there, “Slashdot.org”. It must be worth alot to you. It would be a shame if someone else got it.
--
Lefty
This agreement allows the organizations running the TLDs themselves to raise prices. The organizations that your registrar is a customer of.
.ORG, one company running .BIZ and one company running .INFO. There is no competition within each TLD.
These organizations are monopolies. Eg. there is one company running
What is worse is that domains do not intrinsically become valuable by themselves, or through anything the registry does. Domains become valuable because of what the user does with them. For example, 10 years ago Google.com was worth nothing, today the registry could decide it would be worth $100m/year.
This in effect punishes people for doing valuable things with the internet.
I believe that this bad idea needs to be stopped.
Looking at some of ICANN's previous bad ideas, maybe ICANN as a whole needs to be abandoned...
Not all domain names are good, some can be made valuable by a slew of marketing and excellent service, but at a basic level some names are worth a lot even if you put up the crappiest website with the worst marketing. Sex.biz was a good example.
I really want to talk with someone who has an interest in working out a better domain name pricing system, whether some form of self-assessed valuation or auction-based acquisition. If there were a bidding process for what annual rate a name was worth based on market value, it would let cheap domains be cheap and valuable domains be put to productive use rather than squatted.
Peace and love, y'all
Thank you so much for pointing that out -- it's nice to know somebody else realizes it as well.
You know, I really wish people would learn about the Constitution and read it more carefully, because it's extremely misinterpreted these days because most people have such a superficial understanding of it. In this case, here's the relevant bit:
If people actually read and understood this clause, they'd realize that the entire U.S Army is unconstitutional simply because it's funded more than two years at a time!
Of course, what's even worse is that all these misinterpretations have been so ingrained into our thought processes that we tend to implicitly support them even when trying to speak agains them. For example, you did that here:
Even though you're correct in pointing out that the 9th and 10th Amendments exist, you're still accepting the premise that the rights are granted by the government in the first place. That's a shame, because the really amazing thing about those Amendments is that they explicitly recognize that that's not the case, and that the rights are actually inherent to humanity!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Here it is, John Bolton on the UN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg3pgF5EjiA
The postal service doesn't get to charge more for delivering mail to prestigious addresses.
Major corporations will buy every domain. Good thinking