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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
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
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
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.
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.
For the same reason that an acre of land in Beverly Hills California costs more than an acre in Jock Itch Wyoming. Location, location, location.
Seriously, only the top-tier Google/HP/IBM domains are going to bother with registering some of the variants. Hell, even HP can't be bothered with registering "hp.biz".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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
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?
very popular sites like google will have their DNS cached almost everywhere, meaning very little actual traffic hitting the root nameservers - there will probably be MORE traffic from typo'd non-existent lookups than real ones.
...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.
$.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
Can anyone say "Monopoly?" How about "AntiTrust"? Do those terms apply to such an organization?
:T:R:A:N:S:
There are already alternative DNS providers. Perhaps it's time we started using them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.
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.
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!"
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
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.
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.
Here it is, John Bolton on the UN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg3pgF5EjiA