VeriSign Increases Domain Name Pricing

BillGatesLoveChild writes "CNET reports VeriSign has made its move, increasing domain name prices by 7%. From October 15 2007, .com domains will now cost $6.42 (up from $6) and .net domains $3.85 per annum. ICANN had previously voted to support the increase. Despite annual income of $323.4M from .com domain names alone, VeriSign claims it needs the increase to provide "a high level of security and reliability for .com." This increase comes in the face of complaints by customers, registrars and senators alike that VeriSign is abusing its ICANN monopoly. Yet the furrowed brows and promises of senators of investigations have come to nothing, even though the only people seemingly in favor of the monopoly are ICANN and VeriSign. With complaints about the pair running back to 2002, what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously?"

Comments

Voting Power

[eldavojohn]

Yet the furrowed brows and promises of senators of investigations have come to nothing, even though the only people seemingly in favor of the monopoly are ICANN and VeriSign.

Kind of reminds me of much ado about Exxonmobil. Say, whatever happened with those congressional hearings about an $8 billion dollar profit for a single quarter? Well, it turns out that over the past 25 years oil companies paid more than $2.2 trillion in taxes (adjusted for inflation). That is more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period.

This sounds a lot like the same thing, we have one company roughly running some kind of monopoly on something we all kind of take for granted but I'm sure the government and government organizations like ICANN see some pretty big tax kickbacks from Verisign. If another player were to enter the market and *gasp* actually turn it into a competition market, then these taxes might be questioned, challenged & lost! And the consumer might end up spending $2 a year instead of $6! Personally, I think the major companies are the consumers and since I don't ever see myself owning more than one domain name unless I start a company, I don't care.

With complaints about the pair running back to 2002, what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously?

First off, don't call it a 'ripoff' because that makes it sound like $6 would break you. And if you're earning minimum wage in America, that's probably not the case. Instead, press this to your elected officials as a monopoly. And when they put on the show and get all huffy, actually make sure they follow through with it! If they don't, write about it and keep bitching. I think the problem is that not a lot of people own a domain that they have to register, I'm sure the vast majority are owned by companies or businesses and that means less votes. So it's kind of a lost cause because the politicians know that this way A) earns their government money and B) doesn't matter to many voters. But if you could get the elderly to care about this, that would all be null & void because there is no voting power like the aging baby boomers :-)

Re:Voting Power

[Red Flayer]

Well, it turns out that over the past 25 years oil companies paid more than $2.2 trillion in taxes (adjusted for inflation). That is more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period.

Source?

Also, gross profit? Net profit? US profit? Worldwide?

Keep in mind that corporations are taxed differently than individuals, hugely profitable ones more so.

Never mind the indirect subsidies the oil industry gets, as well as the indirect costs born by the public (pollution, etc) that aren't factored into the oil companies' P&Ls.

Re:Voting Power

[EnglishTim]

You're making no sense. Sure, a company's web presence rests on their domain name, but the cost doesn't scale with the size of the business. It's such a drop in the ocean. You should be much more worried about the cost of paper clips, as it's likely to have a much higher impact on a company's bottom line.

Re:Voting Power

[sholden]

Remember, domain names are the base unit of property on the internet. The blocks on which EVERYTHING rests. Therefore, increasing costs there causes that cost to trickle down to EVERYTHING else. Imagine that since the prices are going up 7%, that EVERYTHING being sold or offered via the web went up 7%.

I suspect you're the one in need of an Economics 101 refresher. It's a fixed cost and hence doesn't affect "EVERYTHING", is is amortised across everything.

Because Amazon has to pay an extra 7% on their $10 domain registration doesn't mean that the price of a $7000 camera at amazon also goes up 7%. It means it goes up ($0.70 / TOTAL_SALES_AT_AMAZON) * 7000 which I'm going to go out on a limb and say rounds to $0.00.

Ripoff?

[MindStalker]

Come on, I remember paying $100 bucks a year for a domain. Boohhooo.. 50 cents..

Cry me a river.

This is ONLY a concern to the people interested in owning thousands of names.
Personally we should go back to $100 with a money pot that reinvest $90 of that to infrastructure or something of the sort.

Re:Ripoff?

[AchiIIe]

> This is ONLY a concern to the people interested in owning thousands of names.

I agree. This increase will not harm people like you and me who own one or two domain names. It will however harm people who buy domains in bulk and do not make use of them. Even worse they try to sell them to you at much higher prices.

The bottom line: This increase is good for consumers, bad for domain sharks.

Re:Ripoff?

[ScrewMaster]

I have a couple of domains, and when I first registered them NetSol was the only option. So I pay my $34.95 a year for each of them, and I haven't had any problems of any kind in the ten years or so I've had them. No real reason to switch, and saving thirty or forty bucks a year wasn't worth the effort. I've had friends who saved some money with JumpDomain and RegisterFly, although in both cases they wish they hadn't.

Re:Ripoff?

[rs79]

"Personally we should go back to $100 with a money pot that reinvest $90 of that to infrastructure or something of the sort.

Problem is that the money rarely goes where you think it's going. Too many people find ways to dip their hands into any revenue stream."

Ah yes, the intellectual infrastruture fund.

Back when the NSF directed netsol to begin charging for domains (to be more clear, the NSF set the price, not netsol) one third of that $100 was set aside in a fund for "intellectual infrastructure". What is that? People. It was specifically meant to "keep the IETF process pure" - it was meant for workshops, paying for people to attend technical meetings that coiuld not otherwise afford to go and the like.

My source for this was NSF staffer Don Mitchell whose name you'll find on the early NSF/Netsol contracts.

People from all over the world paid into this fund for years.

What happened to it? As a result of lobbying the early ICANN wonks got congress to give it to their pet projects - internet2 which was of benefet only to US universities.

So lets not do that again shall we?

Re:Ripoff?

[adickerson0]

I would like to see something progressive...
1-5 domains at $5 each
5-20 domains at $50 for each above 5
20-80 domains at $500 for each above 20
80-320 domains at $5,000 for each above 80
320-1280 domains at $50,000 for each above 320
1280+ domains at $500,000 for each above 1280

I don't know the exact numbers but I think this illustrates the point.

Honestly ...

[ScrewMaster]

With complaints about the pair running back to 2002, what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously?

Honestly, probably not much. We live in the decade of the Bush Administration, Halliburton, Iraq, the Patriot Act ... a load of crap that is so massive that DNS probably isn't even on the radar for our "elected misrepresentatives" even assuming they understand it or grasp the significance of it. Congress has become rather disconnected from the public it nominally serves, and Verisign and ICANN aren't even remotely in touch with anything resembling reality. That whole "SiteFinder" episode showed very clearly how far out in left field Verisign's upper management is standing.

Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

It never ceases to amaze me what will stir outrage in some people. Now we're looking at an extra $.42 per year. Wow. Lose a third of your pay in taxes (or more if you add in sales tax, fees, etc) and no one complains. A domain name goes up $.42 per year and the world comes to an end. I work for a small ISP here in NYC and even business people will whine about $20 per month extra for an Internet connection based upon multiple T-1s yet they have no problem spending $3,500 or more per month for their rent. This despite the fact that they called us because their DSL is down for three days.

A friend once mentioned that it is easier for people to pay indirect costs no matter how much they are than to fathom a direct cost. Maybe it's just this aspect of mental laziness that is the cause. Or possibly it is an excuse to vent or a combination of both.

I wish domains were more expensive

[muszek]

Try finding a decent domain name these days. Everything's taken and a vast majority of registered domains are parked. I wish domains would cost like $50 or $100 per year. The extra cash could go to charity.

I was hosting my friend's site for 2 or 3 years. Completely irrelevant domain name (htskrotownik.org) which will never be of any use to anyone. It got PageRank 1 (could be 2 before). Anyways, he abandoned the site and didn't renew the domain. It was picked up in no time after it was back on the market and is happily parked ever since.

Get over it.

[Eevee]

Time to go for a flamebait moderation.

Just shut up and get over it.

This is the first price increase since 1999, at less than the rate of inflation, over a bit of pocket change. 42 cents? I've likely got a hundred times that in loose pennies scattered around the house. If you've got a domain and it's not worth an extra four dimes and two pennies, then drop it because it wasn't worth jack in the first place. There are things worth complaining about and this isn't one of them.

Re:Get over it.

[Intron]

Why should the price go up? Every cost in the computer industry is going down. Look at $/GB of storage or $/MIPS CPU or $/MBPS network, for examples. Also, have you ever heard of economies of scale? As the number of domains skyrockets, the cost per domain to administer should be falling through the floor.

The problem with monopolies is that they have no incentive to become more efficient.

Re:Get over it.

[Eevee]

Would you be happy if your salary went down as fast as the cost of computer equipment? I know I wouldn't be thrilled. The things involved in the registering of a domain where the costs have gone down (i.e., computers) are only a minor component; the things involved where the costs have gone up (i.e., rent, power, or people--not only salaries, but overhead costs like health insurance) are a major component.

As far as economies of scale, it works for some things, not for others. Buying coal by the bargeload is more cost-effective than by 50-pound sacks; however, help-desk costs theoretically scale pretty much with the number of customers. (Actually, I'd expect the amount of hand-holding required to go up slightly faster than the number of customers, as the tech-savy were the early adopters so the clueful-to-clueless ratio can only get worse...)

abuse of domain names, and sliding pricing

[SuperBanana]

what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously

Stop buying domain names. 90% of the people (who aren't domain squatters) who have them, don't need them.

Seriously. It used to be that people used (gasp) hostnames under domain names, and subdirectories under those.

I know people who have three domain names for different kinds of personal websites; one domain name has their "video blog", another has their homepage, a third has their "buisness"(hobby.)

Realistically, there should be quotas- individuals aren't really the problem, but cap them at perhaps a dozen domains, globally. Corporations? Maybe a few dozen, tops.

Or, perhaps an exponential pricing curve based on the global number of domains you have registered; individuals won't need more than a couple for almost any reason I can think of, and companies which are making money using domain names can afford to pay quite a bit more.

DNS will be faster, domain name squatting will cease to be a problem, etc.

Re:abuse of domain names, and sliding pricing

[qwijibo]

You think the large scale domain squatters won't just register in the names of every homeless person they can find or make up? In your world, are these people honest, upstanding members of the community? I always found that they overlapped quite a bit with spammers and other con artists. Your plan sounds good on the surface, but would have no positive impact whatsoever if it were applied in reality.

However, you're right about subdomains, directories, etc. Why does every movie need to have its own domain? MoneyGrubber2TheSearchForMoreMoneyTheMovie.com could be movies.sony.com/MoneyGrubber2 just as easily, and it would add the parent company's brand into the link, which some marketing exec should be drooling over.

My personal favorite is having people tell me my domain isn't used because I don't have a web page with anything interesting to them. They email me at the domain to tell me that I'm not using it and they would like me to give it to them. The irony escapes them.

The grass can't be greener on BOTH sides...

[xENoLocO]

You cant have it two ways... either the government takes control of it or they don't.

I vote they don't.

I thought....

[rob1980]

Yet the furrowed brows and promises of senators of investigations have come to nothing, even though the only people seemingly in favor of the monopoly are ICANN and VeriSign.

I thought we wanted the government to quit trying to legislate the internet; now it seems we want them to go after VeriSign and ICANN? Which is it, do we want the government meddling with the internet or not?

Do Something While WeCANN

[Doc Ruby]

Whatever Americans do to rein in ICANN and its VeriSign profit charity, we have to do it quick, before ICANN moves to Switzerland to avoid US control a la Halliburton.