VeriSign Jacks Up .com, .net Prices To the Max

se7en writes "VeriSign is jacking up prices for the .com and .net domains for the second year running, increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN. 'Assuming that VeriSign continues the 7 percent rise each year (which seems reasonable given the company's history), registrars will be looking at $9.00 for .com domains by the time the current contract ends in 2012 — a 50 percent increase in six years.' Registrars have no choice but to pony up, and chances are they'll pass the pain on to customers."

Comments

Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[orkysoft]

I wonder if this will decrease the amount of spam sites that clutter up so many Google search results...

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[cheater512]

Unlikely. A couple of extra bucks wont do anything.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Kozz]

HAHAHAHAHA... oh, you were serious??

I think changing policies on domain tasting would do a hell of a lot more.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[shanen]

This was exactly my first reaction to the article. Anything that increases the spammer's costs is a good thing, but it's basically too indirect to really matter. Rather Verisign is just acting to increase their own profits and using the spammers as an excuse.

Since we're on the topic of spam (and domains are included below), here's my latest suggestion to Gmail:

Basically Gmail is losing value for all of us as it becomes spam soaked. Even their filtering is having troubles with false positives and false negatives--and the spam is just increasing. Therefore I think Google should act more aggressively to drive the spammers away from Gmail.

My latest anti-spam idea is a SuperReport option. (Kind of like SpamCop, but not so lazy.) If you click on the SuperReport option, Gmail would explode the spam and try to analyze it for you to help go after the spammers more aggressively. Here is one way to implement it:

The first pass would be a low-cost quickie that would also act like a kind of CAPTCHA. This would just be an automated pass looking for obvious patterns like email addresses and URLs. The email would then be exploded and shown to the person making the report. The thoughtful responses for the second pass would guide the system in going after the spammers--making Gmail a *VERY* hostile environment for spammers to the point that they would stop spamming Gmail.

For example, if the first pass analysis finds an email address in the header, the exploded options might be "Obvious fake, ignore", "Plausible fake used to improve delivery", "Apparently valid drop address for replies", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". (Of course there should be pop-up explanations for help, which would be easy if it's done as a radio button. Also, Google always needs to allow for "Other" because the spammers are so damn innovative. In the "Other" case, the second pass should call for an explanation of why it is "Other".)

If the first pass analysis finds a URL, the exploded options should be things like "Drugs", "Stock scam", "Software piracy", "Loan scam", "419 scam", "Prostitution", "Fake merchandise", "Reputation theft", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". I think URLs should include a second radio button for "Registered Domain" (default), "Redirection", "Possible redirection", "Dynamic DNS routing", and "Other". (Or perhaps that would be another second-pass option?)

At the bottom of the expanded first pass analysis there should be some general options about the kind of spam and suggested countermeasures, and the submit SuperReport button. This would trigger the heavier second pass where Gmail's system would take these detailed results of the human analysis of the spam and use them to really go after the spammers in a more serious way.

I think Gmail should also rate the reporters on their spam-fighting skills, and figure out how smart they are when they are analyzing the spam. I want to earn a "Spam Fighter First Class" merit badge!

If you agree with these ideas--or have better ones, I suggest you try to call them to Google's attention. Google still seems to be an innovative and responsive company--and they claim they want to fight evil, too. More so if many people write to them? (I even think they recently implemented one of my suggestions to improve the Groups...)

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[orkysoft]

Well, spammers/squatters generally need a lot of domain names to build the fake referencing networks to game Google, so the costs would add up. A few bucks here, a few bucks there, soon, you are talking about real money.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[DigiShaman]

OTOH, think how much money companies are spending to filter out all that SPAM. Everything from Firewall, to Anti-virus solutions to block the stuff. That doesn't come cheap depending on how many employees or customers there are effected. If this 7% does cut into the spammers profits in a way that it shuts them down, it will be a lot cheaper over all than the current meathods of fighting spam. Oh, and think how much bandwidth it would free up around the world.

7% increase to knock out the spammers? God, we can only dream of it!

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[ILuvRamen]

if it does, I'll sure pay the extra like $1 a year or whatever. Actually, either way I don't really care lol. I mean really, that's like 0.1% of the yearly beef jerky budget. My yearly hosting for my site was just up 2 days ago and it was up $10 from last year just for hosting, no DNS, and I wasn't even particularly concerned about that. The only people that should care about a tiny yearly increase are ones that register a seriously high amount of domain names and I can't think of any "good" reason to do that. If not illegal, anyone who registers a ton of domains is at least doing something shady or annoying.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a shorter version: "Allow Bayesian filtering."

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Cairnarvon]

A couple of extra bucks times a few hundred thousand. Most domain squatters don't squat just one domain.
Of course, it doesn't matter much as long as the five-day grace period makes domain kiting possible.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[KillerCow]

I don't know... a couple of extra bucks multiplied over a million squatted domains might do something. Charging what a domain is worth is probably the only way to stop squatting.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[transami]

There is a simple solution to email spam. It's called a white list.

A while back I worte an email to a fellow programmer whom I never before emailed. His email system automatically replied asking that I confirm my message was from a person by answering a bran dead simple question. By replying appropriately I was white listed and he got my original message.

Ultimately of course AI's might circumvent any such system, but those days are still ways off, so I don't know why email engineers haven't made this a standard option.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[cheater512]

A 7% increase is nothing for spammers.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[shanen]

Don't confuse challenge/response with whitelisting--but it doesn't matter since SMTP doesn't verify the sender. Any technical response to a fundamentally economic problem is only going to be a bandaid at best.

However, we're getting too far off topic, if'n you ask me. The part that is relevant to this discussion is how much of the spammers' costs are related to domain acquisition, and the answer is 'precious little' and there are always other ways to work around it. In particular, some of the most annoying spammers around here are hosting their own websites and using dynamic DNS services to route their suckers without ever buying any domains of their own.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Nullav]

Then again, domains are a per year cost. They're the least expensive part of running a website. (They can even be skipped entirely in some cases, thanks to search engines. But let's think of the typosquatters for a moment...)
Rather than causing squatters to simply close shop (Would you? It's almost sweatless revenue as it is.) because they're making less off of ads, I'd expect them to pay more attention to what domains are actually worth holding on to.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[foghat.fog]

Oh, and think how much bandwidth it would free up around the world.

Our VP of IS for my company has released a statement saying email spam accounts for 90% of our bandwidth traffic. We're now moving to filter the spam off site. That'll free my companies personal bandwidth, but the point is, it's still being filtered somewhere which means it's still accounting for a mass of the worlds bandwidth. Spam is very much a scourge.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Dan541]

A while back I worte an email to a fellow programmer whom I never before emailed. His email system automatically replied asking that I confirm my message was from a person by answering a bran dead simple question. By replying appropriately I was white listed and he got my original message. I get 5 or 6 of those a month from people I never emailed, I report them all as spam.

~Dan

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[arth1]

Applying a Turing test to the sender is only successful if you assume that (a) machines can't send wanted mail, and (b) you receiving the e-mail is important enough for the human senders to jump through an extra hoop.

The first one is obviously false. There are newsletters I want, and automated alerts, like a bill becoming due. And I want to continue to receive these even if the sending company changes the sender address.

The second is false too. I can quite well imagine e-mails with something important to the recipient and not the sender, and if the sender gets a reply back asking them to identify themselves, they won't follow up. Because it wasn't important to them. No matter how important it might have been for the recipient.
An example: If I had tickets to a concert I can't go to after all, and knowing you're a fan, I sent you an e-mail offering them to you. If I got a reply back saying I need to identify myself as a human, I'd mutter "and the horse you rode in on", and either give the tickets to someone else or simply throw them away.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[i.of.the.storm]

The thing is, squatters rely on the money back thing so that they never actually pay for a domain, they just return it after three days and then instantly renew it again. I learned about this when the domain of my school's robotics club got squatted by some assholes because the guy who owned the domains had gone to college and wouldn't respond to my emails, and I was trying to catch them on the small gap when they didn't own the domain, but eventually one of the squatters gave up on the .net domain (we had .com, .net. and .org) so we just bought that and gave up on the other two.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[_KiTA_]

Well, spammers/squatters generally need a lot of domain names to build the fake referencing networks to game Google, so the costs would add up. A few bucks here, a few bucks there, soon, you are talking about real money.


Yes, but the way I understand it, they use a trick that lets them register domain names for a few days at a time for essentially nothing to get most of their domain names.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Except for emails sent by automatons. A server that sent an order confirmation email is not going to "reply" to any emails. Many important emails are sent from non-observed email boxes.

Sometimes an email may be sent from alternate or temporary accounts. This is more often the case when something is urgent.

Also my mom won't react to such an email. Most people assume that an email sent is an email sent, and any emails requesting some further action are always going to have problems.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Jurily]

Email system: "What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
You: "What do you mean? An African or European swallow?"
Email system: "Huh? I... I don't know that."
[email system explodes]

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[ehrichweiss]

You speak the absolute truth. Even before domain tasting and $6.95 domains($0.99 .info at times) spammers had plenty enough cashflow to pay for any domain name and still make a hefty profit from adspace, etc. I'd say payback on a domain would be at least 10 times what you paid for it, likely in the order of hundreds or thousands. I have poorly marketed sites that pull their weight in ad revenue over the course of a year, and OTOH I have acquaintances("greyhat" spammers) who "splog" and make $10,000 a month. To do so they said one has to dedicate themselves to setting up at least 10 new domains per day, every day. With a 30-day month, that's $3,000-ish in domain names and, assuming they're not using botnets for this, they likely pay close to another $3,000/mo for hosting and yet still clear $10,000. It would be safe to say that the further one embraces the Dark Side, the better the pay.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Cairnarvon]

For legitimate users the domain is the least expensive part of running a website. For squatters, who generally have thousands upon thousands of domains all pointing to one or a handful of servers, it's not.
Or it wouldn't be if not for domain kiting.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[amirulbahr]

I think GP was referring to the proliferation of crap on the Web rather than spam emails.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[stevey]

I am an off-site mail filterer, and our stats show that 99% of incoming mail is spam.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would propose to make the first 20 domains you have to be priced below $10 each. From 20 to 50 domains owned by one company or somehow under the ownership of a single entity or conglomerate to be around $25 each. Each domain above number 50 for about $150 each. That will free up a lot of rubbish from the DNS, without hurting the honorable domain owner.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[fat_mike]

Um, no.

When we registered our first domain in 1996 it was $75 for one year through NSI. The fact that we can renew for 10 years at $120 make me believe that spam companies aren't really going to care a bit about this.

I think every CS student should be required to take at least two semesters of Business and one semester of Philosophy. We could avoid retarded post like this.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[mpe]

A 7% increase is nothing for spammers.

Especially if they are also scammers who don't pay their bills in the first place.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an off-site mail filterer too, and our stats show that 100% of incoming mail is spam. Now we just block port 25, and we're so effective that the companies tell us they don't need our services after the first week.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[sorak]

I wonder if this will decrease the amount of spam sites that clutter up so many Google search results...

Considering how much it would cost to set something like that up, and how much profit it would take to make something like that worthwhile, three dollars isn't going to break them.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[MurkyGoth]

That kinda assumes that spammers are paying for their own hosting.

There are two ways of doing it:

1. Use a compromised host to serve the spam target pages
2. Rip off credit cards to buy hosts to serve the spam target pages

Given the lifespan of URLs in spam (which need to constantly change to dodge the blacklists) then either method would mean 100% profits for the spammer without having to change their existing methods - they don't spend *anything* on hosting.

This is just another money grab from legitimate users - I don't think it's (financially) worth me renewing any of my .com/.net domains any more...way to piss on your own chips, guys...

(Option 2 does have the 'plus' side that the idiots who are actually buying from spam links get their credit cards ripped to the max - hopefully they'll learn not to buy stuff from fscking spam!)

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[hansamurai]

Well, now that domain tasting has supposedly been eliminated, and Google has cracked down on them too, we should see some improvement over time.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[pfleming]

Then there are the automated responses to mailing lists that people have signed up for. If you are going to participate on a mailing list, disable the "prove yourself" email.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[BlueParrot]

There is a simple solution to email spam

No there isn't. Don't make me post the form at you...

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[Dan541]

The main problem is that spam often uses a fake from address and sometimes this address is real so the "prove yourself" goes to an innocent person.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[UKRevenant]

It will probably make no difference at all to spam unfortunately. I have long said that the best approach to stopping spam is to stop the spammer making money at all. My approach is to make the Credit Card companies responsible (you know Visa, MasterCard, Amex) if they get large fines for their customers sending spam they would include in their terms a condition preventing spamming. It is not perfect, but as tracking down the spammers is the hardest part removing that from the equation makes life easier. This also enables any one of the larger economies of the world pass a local law that has global reach. Sadly, not all spam has a direct financial link but a good amount does. Just my thoughts - again.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[antic]

Re part (b) - often the most important emails to me are from potential clients. They may have contacted a number of companies and, you are correct, could well ignore my bounce and just choose someone else.

Re:Will this make spamsites unprofitable?

[shentino]

One good way to cut down on spam is to automatically reject any incoming emails that FAIL a DKIM check.

If you can prove it's forged, then there's no point in trying to analyze it any further...IT'S SPAM.

And?

[TubeSteak]

Is there any reason Verisign wouldn't jack up prices by the max allowed in their contract?

Re:And?

[Mr. Slippery]

Is there any reason Verisign wouldn't jack up prices by the max allowed in their contract?

In a sane world, behaving like a bunch of asshats by trying to squeeze us for every penny they can, would mean that their contract wouldn't be renewed by ICANN; so there would be such an incentive. In a sane world.

Of course, we do not live in a sane world.

Re:And?

[calebt3]

It scares off potential customers?

Re:And?

[BrookHarty]

Well if you don't like them, go register your domain somewhere else!

Oh wait.

Re:And?

[Brian Gordon]

hmm 7%.. verisign is just trying to catch up with the rate of inflation :)

Re:And?

[Scaba]

And that's the beauty of a monopoly - you don't have to worry about losing customers.

Re:And?

[Brian Gordon]

Maybe slashdot should be worried about scaring off customers with its stupid lingo in the title..

Re:And?

[mlts]

Hate to be a devil's advocate here, and but Verisign in some ways has to, because publically traded companies like VRSN have to show their shareholders they are earning as much money as the traffic can bear, and if not, why not.

If they don't, shareholders will become former shareholders, and/or try to find reasons to sue. This is true about any company, if any company cuts prices on a flagship product, they need to have a good reason (such as a new model, competition is forcing their hand, or perhaps going for higher volume sales) to explain why to shareholders why they did so and why they chose to get less income.

Verisign isn't perfect, but the real culprits are ICANN, and the short range thinking of stockholders in the US who only care about what is coming next quarter, rather than being with a company long term. I'd rather invest in a company who has multiple subsequent quarterly charges against their income for R&D than one which always makes the numbers (even barely) each quarter, but really has no real direction to expand.

Re:And?

[CastrTroy]

If your running a website, the $9 registration fee is pretty minimal. If you can't afford that, you probably aren't getting much out of having your site anyway.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any reason Verisign wouldn't jack up prices by the max allowed in their contract?

Absolutely none.

But given their censorship of domains, wild card fiasco, I say ICANN should pull them as a registrar, remember, Network Solutions is Verislime, oops, sorry, Verisign.

Verisign Sucks

Re:And?

[CastrTroy]

What customers?

Re:And?

[repka]

I don't mind paying $9 dollars, I mind paying them exclusively to Verisign.

Re:And?

[garett_spencley]

I pay $9.20 USD right now / .com domain. I think that $9 is what VERISIGN gets. Not what people actually pay.

Granted, I agree. If you can't afford $10 - $15 / YEAR for your domain then you're not getting much out of it. But then again, not all .com's are for-profit. Some people don't like that and think that .com should ONLY be for commercial entities, and I agree that's absolutely what it was designed for initially. Only problem is if you don't register a .com for your domain then a squatter will. And, unfortunately, unless your traffic consists mostly of tech-savvy users then the majority of your type-in traffic will hit the .com first.

Re:And?

[segoy]

Guy with a 1M+ UID comes up with this to say? Where's my +3 [Insightful and 1M+ uid] modifier?

Verisign isn't perfect, but the real culprits are ICANN, and the short range thinking of stockholders in the US who only care about what is coming next quarter, rather than being with a company long term. I'd rather invest in a company who has multiple subsequent quarterly charges against their income for R&D than one which always makes the numbers (even barely) each quarter, but really has no real direction to expand.

This is why I left my company traded on the exchange for an LLP. Oftentimes there is a lot of investment that goes into excellent profits (prophets?), and shareholders rarely tolerate seeing their companies enrich the lives of anyone other than themselves.

Re:And?

[Martin Blank]

It's one of the reasons I'm considering leaving my company. While I do generally worship at the altar of the almighty dollar, there are some sects that are a little too eager to keep the money for a chosen select few without anything more than lip-service about the sweat of the parishioners. I don't mind working for a publicly-traded company, as long as their stated commitment to their people is a commitment to all of their people.

Re:And?

[MrNaz]

You fail sarcasm. Totally. You could say that you have failed to the max.

Re:And?

[Paiev]

The GP's comment was the most obvious sarcasm ever. Congratulations! You win a gold star...for STUPIDITY!

Re:And?

[MrCawfee]

How would a domain registry possibly function without it being a monopoly? Well it probally couldn't. Someone has to publish the root zones, and maintain those servers, and do you really want one company running one root server and another company running another? Well it really can't.

The system we have now is fine as it is, yeah Verisign controls ICANN (they are pretty much the only ones who talk at registrar meetings), but anything they do that is extremely controversial gets rejected.

And as far as competition goes, that has moved to the registrars, who end up finding that gTLDs are not profitable enough without other services making money.

Now another thing that verisign is trying to get passed is to charge 0.15 per domain name for bulk deletions, which may have the effect of killing the recycling business, which is most of these registrar's bread and butter.

Either way, the atm fee i paid at the gas station today is more than this fee increase.. although it does make verisign an extra 30 million

Re:And?

[TheLink]

"don't mind working for a publicly-traded company, as long as their stated commitment to their people is a commitment to all of their people."

That's more likely to happen if it's a Cooperative.

Even if Cooperatives do as well or even better than Companies (thinking long term is typically better than "let's sack everyone and boost profits for next quarter"), there is currently not as much incentive for people to start up cooperatives - it typically takes a lot of effort and risk to be the "first boss" and get everyone else etc. Companies are started instead so that the person starting them can get the lions share (I have no objections to that).

Perhaps existing cooperatives could create funds to be used to help get more cooperatives started (a bit like what "venture capitalists" are doing).

Re:And?

[vsloathe]

Additionally, some have mentioned web "spammers" (no such thing, in legal terms). Most of the ones I know tend to use .infos, which can still be had for around 80 cents a pop per year. I am a registrar, and I get my .coms at 6 bucks a piece. I could get them cheaper, but I would have to do more volume. Maybe someday. I sell my .coms at a much lower margin than a lot of the big registrars. It's pretty common to find $9.99 per year .coms, but I sell them for between 6.70-7.50. Depends on the time of year or if I'm having a sale. Also we do volume discounts with our larger customers (usually resellers). Raising the cost of domains won't fight web "spam". Mostly the trend right now is to use parasite hosting (e.g. free, someone else's domain, free blogs etc) and leach off their authority. The answer begins with Google really. It's in Google's best interest to keep *some* web spam around, as it tends to make the company an awful lot of money (Made For Adsense pages are semi-legitimate, as they are still taking the surfer to what he or she wants to find, and up until just recently, they've made Google an absolute mountain of money).

Re:And?

[onefriedrice]

I wish domain name prices were much higher. Currently they're ridiculously low, and it only invites squatters. Most legit companies will only have a handful of domain names anyway.

Re:And?

[dosius]

Needless to say...

I don't own any .com or .net domains. Only a .org and a couple .infos

-uso.

Re:And?

[rtb61]

Well then perhaps the next time, they can auction off the rights to the root domains, the highest bidder gets it and charges the maximum the market can pay. The highest bidder can also look for other ways to maximise their returns, weekly rentals on the most popular domains, immediate foreclosure on domain names if the fee isn't paid on time and the auctioning of those domain name.

The guaranteed quickest way of getting other countries to create their own root servers and only mirror those entries from other countries that adhere to some sort of reasonable international rules and via accepted treaties.

Re:And?

[TubeSteak]

In a sane world, behaving like a bunch of asshats by trying to squeeze us for every penny they can, would mean that their contract wouldn't be renewed by ICANN; so there would be such an incentive. You seem to forget that ICANN already approved this (and future) price increases in advance.

Verisign can't change prices without negotiating with ICANN.
So really, any name calling and/or accusations of penny squeezing should be directed at ICANN.

Re:And?

[zentigger]

There are plenty of other TLDs that would be happy to have your money. You could always register a .tw domain for $40/year or a .cn for only $20. I think you can have a .ki domain for a measly $5,000 per anum. It just so happens that Verisign has the one you want--the glorious .com. That's a bit like whining about Intel having a monopoly on the Pentium processor or Mattel having a monopoly on the Barbie Doll.

Maybe you should go back to playing with your Barbies and let the grownups talk.

Re:And?

[number11]

If you can't afford $10 - $15 / YEAR for your domain then you're not getting much out of it.

Well, you're not getting much money out of it.

Re:And?

[Dan541]

None of my domains/sites are for profit I don't even place ads on them.

Re:And?

[Mr. Slippery]

It just so happens that Verisign has the one you want--the glorious .com. That's a bit like whining about Intel having a monopoly on the Pentium processor or Mattel having a monopoly on the Barbie Doll.

What, Verisign invented .com? Fsck no. .com was created by the U.S. government and is the property of the people of the United States.

Re:And?

[DarkIye]

It's $9, man. There are worse things in life.

Re:And?

[Yfrwlf]

This is another instance in which Capitalism fails. If all sites need to be shared through one root server, then this system should be a very mechanized, simple, and fair one that shouldn't be owned by those who just want to profit off it. Try telling the lone African kid wanting his own site no because a company thought they should pointlessly milk money from the world. When is the government going to step in and tell them "No"?

Re:And?

[Nullav]

Those poor saps without AdBlock/NoScript, of course.

Re:And?

[Baki]

Yes this logic is heard more often, and even lawsuits have been won using this logic. But I fail to see why a publicly traded company has an obligation to maximalize profits.

As a shareholder, I own a little part of the company. It is my free choice to invest ini that company, and I may have different purposes by investing. If I don't like what the company is doing (e.g. making not enough profit, but also behaving unethically, damaging the environment, competing with and damaging another company that I also happen to be shareholder of) I am free to sell by shares. So while I may hope that the companies management tries to give me a decent profit, I fail to see how this can be the only purpose of the company and how I should be able to demand it.

What is the reason a company exists? A (public) company has three classes of stakeholders: the shareholders, the employees and the customers (one might add a fourth one, the environment/community the company operates in). The companies actions should reflect a healthy balance and reflect the interests of all these stakeholders and not only serve the interests of the shareholders alone.

Doing the latter should, IMO, be forbidden by law. It leads to short sighted decisions, that damage the interests of other stakeholders and of society in general. In the long run, it will often even also damage the interests of the shareholders themselves.

Re:And?

[Nullav]

They could raise the price to $200/year and it still wouldn't make a difference because of domain tasting. (Really, who actually gets buyer's remorse over a domain name?)

Re:And?

[1u3hr]

Well if you don't like them, go register your domain somewhere else! Oh wait.

Wait for what? There are dozens of other TLDs, aside from .com and .net. But despite the price rise, I think .com is still the cheapest.

Re:And?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Agreed. Verisign has been deliberately cooperating with domain squatters at the expense of more legitimate customers, they don't act against fraudulent domain registrations for pharming even when they and their service resellers are notified, they don't against irresponsible domain registrars, and they pulled that stunt a few years back where they returned their own ad page for all queries for unregistered domains.

If a modest price increase would get them to administer .com properly, I'd pay it without blinking for my domains, and encourage my professional associates to do so as well.

Re:And?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Domain tasting is absolutely one of the things Verisign allows and encourages, at the expense of its legitimate customers. Among their other offenses, it's the sort of thing that should encourage ICANN to dump the Verisign contract, and allow a vendor who may charge more but will properly administer the domain.

Re:And?

[X0563511]

And, unfortunately, unless your traffic consists mostly of tech-savvy users then the majority of your type-in traffic will hit the .com first.

I don't mean to sound elitist... well, maybe I do. But In my totally-irrelevant opinion, too bad. People in general need to start understanding that these tools are a little more complex than they think, and they really should THINK before they type something in randomly.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign has long since sold Network Solutions. To Verisign, Network Solutions is just another registrar, like GoDaddy, register.com, Tucows, etc.

Re:And?

[Jesus_666]

The problem is that you suffer because they are too stupid to understand TLDs.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks - we're talking about prime real estate for your business to operate and for individuals to communicate. I'm not a fan of price increases, but let's be realistic here. The internet is not FREE - someone must maintain it.

Re:And?

[CastrTroy]

Well, you're not getting much enjoyment or money out of it. If it's not worth the cost of a theatre ticket for you to register your domain for a year, I would ask why you even want to have one.

Re:And?

[PieceofLavalamp]

So that means the price will go back down if/when the dollar regains some of its value right?

Re:And?

[jrumney]

Exactly. Put a maximum fee increase in a contract with a monopoly and they will take it. The same happens with government regulated monopolies everywhere. The only real remedy is to create a competitive market, but too often governments break big monopolies up into a number of smaller monopolies and claim they have fixed things for the consumer.

Re:And?

[mxs]

How would a domain registry possibly function without it being a monopoly? Well it probally couldn't. Someone has to publish the root zones, and maintain those servers, and do you really want one company running one root server and another company running another? Well it really can't. Wait a minute, Verisign runs the Root zones and their servers ? Since when ? :P

The system we have now is fine as it is, yeah Verisign controls ICANN (they are pretty much the only ones who talk at registrar meetings), but anything they do that is extremely controversial gets rejected. That is not fine. That is bearable, but far from fine. Besides, VeriSign has proven again and again that they cannot be trusted -- so why trust them ?

And as far as competition goes, that has moved to the registrars, who end up finding that gTLDs are not profitable enough without other services making money. And yet they get to deal with the customers on domain disputes, get to do all the administrative work on domains, etc ... Sorry, I'd like my registrar to focus on EXCELLENT domain registrar service, not on shoddy webhosting, domainkiting, frontrunning, or other such bullshit.

Now another thing that verisign is trying to get passed is to charge 0.15 per domain name for bulk deletions, which may have the effect of killing the recycling business, which is most of these registrar's bread and butter. Too fricking bad if it's their bread and butter, it's pretty damn annoying to customers. They are hopefully going to get rid of domain tasting as well, another bread and butter operation that's really annoying.

Either way, the atm fee i paid at the gas station today is more than this fee increase.. although it does make verisign an extra 30 million And are we getting anything in return ?

Re:And?

[Kalriath]

Which government? Because out of necessity, no government should have complete control over the very core of the internet (and as at this point, no government does). So "the" government can't step in and tell anyone "No", because it's not any government's exclusive domain to make that call.

Re:And?

[Kalriath]

No, .us is the property of the US. .COM, .ORG, and .NET are the International TLDs (not ccTLDs) and belong to "no one in particular"

Re:And?

[Lumpy]

how about the fact that "to the max" is a joke at $9.00

I paid $75.00 a year for my domain name back in the 90's even $10.00 a year is dirt stinking cheap compared to what we had to pay in 1994.

Re:And?

[GWBasic]

In a sane world, behaving like a bunch of asshats by trying to squeeze us for every penny they can, would mean that their contract wouldn't be renewed by ICANN; so there would be such an incentive. In a sane world.

What's really happening is that there's been a landrush on every concievable domain because they're so cheap. Now, if you want to register a domain, chances are there's a squatter willing to sell it to you for $1000 because they were able to squat on it for $10-$15 bucks.

I hate to say this, but it seems that .coms are "cheaper" if Verisign charges what the market will bear; because it'll drive the squatters out of business.

Can't say I mind...

[pushing-robot]

There's a very limited number of reasonable .com and .net domains out there. If they aren't worth USD $10 a year to you, maybe you should let someone else have a chance?

I think registration should be something like $100 one-time + $25/yr. Yeah, I'd spend a lot more, but it would be worth it to kill squatters.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Scaba]

It wouldn't kill squatters. It would kill things like indie band and vanity domains.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Brian Gordon]

...which should use different domains. Dot com is for commercial websites. It ticks me off to no end when websites name themseves .com when they have no off-internet existence whatsoever. Use .net if you can't stay away from making up a lame website name to be all legitimate like a business, or if you're a one-man development group (cough Flash developing houses). Use .name for personal sites. Use .info if you're just looking for a cheap DNS entry like I am.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[CastrTroy]

If you can't manage to afford $25 a year for your website, you could just go with yourband.myspace.com, or something along those lines. $25 is pretty minimal. It's about the same as a couple packs of guitar strings.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[garett_spencley]

The problem is that "lay-people" consider .com to be "it". And if you register "my-indie-band.org" some squatter WILL register "my-indie-band.com" ... and when your fans go to look you up they'll type in the ".com" before the ".org".

Is it bullshit ? Yeah, absolutely. Is there much we can do about it ? Not really.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Scaba]

You forgot about the initial $100 + $25/year. And why should legitimate users of domains be punished for the bad behavior of squatters? Should gas be $100 fill-up fee + $25 per gallon because some people who drive are criminals?

Re:Can't say I mind...

[zippthorne]

If you have a band, even an indie band, and you're selling stuff or live performances, wouldn't that classify as "commercial" enough for a .com domain?

Re:Can't say I mind...

[CastrTroy]

All people who drive are criminals. They are killing the environment. :P. Ok on a more serious note, it sucks, but it's probably the only way to keep the squatters away. Make it not financially viable to operate, and they will go away. However, I would support that the extra fees go to charities, so that they can be put to better use than lining the pockets of verisign.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Brian Gordon]

I don't mind that.. I'm impressed by .org or .net websites that refuse to register the .com.. it's always taken by some squatter but when I get the squatter page I'm not annoyed, I think "those guys are hardcore"

Re:Can't say I mind...

[ceoyoyo]

"It ticks me off to no end when websites name themseves .com when they have no off-internet existence whatsoever."

So eBay should give up eBay.com?

Re:Can't say I mind...

[drydirt]

That would have been a nice rule if we'd stuck to it in 1996. But now all a .net, .name, or .info domain says is "I was too late to grab the .com"

I left out .org because it does actually mean something to those who would notice such things.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, that's debatable. Dotcom has stopped meaning "commercial website" long before the dotcom boom. If you want a .com for your cat page, that's fine. Second, the .net TLD is no alternative either, because that's another Verisign domain which just got more expensive.

The whole idea of limiting TLDs to a few category-like names (outside of CCTLDs) is the primary economic problem with the domain name system. DNS is not a directory and can't be one. Domain names are administrative boundaries, not content descriptors. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that there is enough variation that you have to pay attention to the "suffix" of a domain. Then people wouldn't so easily think that .com is a proper website and the rest is for the amateurs. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that there can be actual competition between registries in terms of infrastructure quality, service and price. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that you can get a domain from a registry in a country of your choice without making people think of your domain as targeted to the people of that country. There should be thousands of TLDs, so that companies no longer feel compelled to own their name under all TLDs.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Brian Gordon]

Well they're actually a commercial site..

Re:Can't say I mind...

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Actually, selling absolutely nothing qualifies as commercial enough for a .com domain. .com, .org, and .net domains have no restrictions anymore.

The point the GP was making is that .com is seen as the primary domain suffix by most people. Given a domain without its suffix, people are far more likely to try the .com version first. Thus, despite the puritan demands that .com be reserved for commercial use, nearly every owner of a website tries for a .com domain -- even if for just a redirect, like slashdot.com -- so any price hiking of .com domains affects everyone.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Brian Gordon]

And there should be absolutely no rules what-so-EVER about owning trademarked domains. I mean, there should be rules, like that you can't own a thousand domain names, but connecting it to real-world American trademark law is just retarded. If I'm in mexico and google hasn't translated to spanish yet because it's the 90s, I should be able to register google.mx and offer a spanish-language google results translator or something.. I'd love to see TLDs being created for web communities and someone putting up google.4chan which is identical to google.com except the o's have nipples. People take trademarks too seriously and those serious business laws should stay the heck away from my internet...

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Epistax]

Are you NUTS? People would type "my-indie-band" and hit SEARCH. Or maybe "I'm feeling lucky". In either case, you'll be the squatter. The situation you describe is SO 2005.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[techno-vampire]

Exactly, and that's the main reason my vanity domain is .us not .com like all those twitiots out there. Granted, the .com version of my name was already in use (by a graphics design company, I think) but even if it weren't, I'd not have taken it because it's not appropriate.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Dan541]

Are you suggesting that Commerce should not be allowed to be online only?
Ever heard the term E-commerce? .com is an unrestricted domain there are no rules for what it should be used for not one of my websites has an off net existence, Why should they?

~Dan

Re:Can't say I mind...

[glwtta]

Actually the laity is much more likely to type "myspace.com"

But, yeah, in the age of usable search engines, very few people are likely to try to guess the domain name to find something.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Brian Gordon]

Holy crap you're retarded, obviously e commerce sites have warehouses and call centers and at least tax records filed somewhere, they're not just a hundredth of a virtual server and a single envelope in one guy's mailbox every month. If your e commerce site is about that big then yes just stick with .net.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[stoborrobots]

Sounds like Brad Templeton's How to fix DNS idea. The idea has been around for a long time; other than economic blockading from the current financial stakeholders, I don't know why is hasn't had more consideration...

The rest of the essays in that collection are at http://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Dan541]

Ok no need to have your PMS.

Going by your opinion name me a SINGLE website that has only virtual existance.

I fail to see why my blog shouldent be .com

Re:Can't say I mind...

[LaskoVortex]

It ticks me off to no end when websites name themseves .com when they have no off-internet existence whatsoever.

I can't understand how this could be. This is like saying "it ticks me off to no end when someone owns land in Oklahoma when they don't even visit once in a while. Oklahoma was put there for people to farm the land." Why would you care at all? Personally, I care about a lot of stuff, but I can't possibly fathom your concern. It would help immensely if you would elaborate how it affects you personally. Otherwise you look like a nut case.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

I left out .org because it does actually mean something to those who would notice such things. Oh? You mean like www.slashdot.org ??

Re:Can't say I mind...

[SeaFox]

Since when have they actually enforced the original intent of TLDs? Everyone's email address from their ISP should be a .net, there are government websites operating with .com, and plenty of for profit sites running with .org domains.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[IHC Navistar]

Seriously.....If an indie band can't affort that, then the band obviously isn't good enough to need/have a website. Or the the title 'band' for that matter.....

Re:Can't say I mind...

[LaskoVortex]

Granted, the .com version of my name was already in use (by a graphics design company, I think) but even if it weren't, I'd not have taken it because it's not appropriate.

What in the hell could you possibly mean by "inappropriate"? Immoral? Deceitful? I absolutely can not understand what the objection is. Is this religious? Does some commandment exist somewhere? #11 maybe?

Thou shalt not register a dot com if thou hath not a product that thou can sell in retail and on thy web.

Is that the commandment? I didn't see it. Am I going to hell?

Maybe it wasn't a commandment. Maybe it was merely a passage in the bible I missed?

And whence Judith did register his dot com name, he felt the wrath of God and knew he hath done wrong.

Is that the passage I missed? Is this when Judith betrayed Jesus?

Maybe registering a dot com name is the original sin? Is this why it hurts to have a baby? Why did Adam do it? That fucker! I could be living in the garden of fucking eden right now if it hadn't been for that dot com registering blasphemous fuck Adam. I bet Eve put him up to it.

Seriously, what is the big objection? Perhaps appeal to reason if you can, otherwise it reeks of zealotry. If you claim to be a hard-core capitalist and companies should get the names, then you can not deny that a dot com domain name is a commodity that should itself be subject to the principles of the open market. If I want to corner the potato market, then people can start eating rice or pony up for the potatoes. Same with dot com names. If I register, for instance "gozybab.com" because that is my band name and then some one realizes that its a cool sounding name and wants it for some online business, then they can pay me for the name or suffer. That is called capitalism. Do you see how it works?

Re:Can't say I mind...

[Jesus_666]

It gets more interesting when you look at the world outside the USA. Should German businesses use .com or .de? Is the local or the commercial aspect defining? What about .us - shouldn't American websites use that unless they're an international busines/oragnization/network?

Any way you look at it, TLD practices are messy. In the end people get the TLDs they think are the most likely to get hit by visitors (or they want a cheap domain and go with whatever's cheapest), which is why .com is what .us should be and .name is irrelevant.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[nurb432]

Everyone has to start somewhere, and many artists are broke when they do.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[ceoyoyo]

But they have no off-Internet existence whatsoever, which is what your complaint was. Those little Flash outfits are also commercial sites.

That's one of the great things about the Internet. Mom and Pop can compete with the corporate giants on a fairly level playing field. Yes, as a customer you have to be careful you don't get ripped off. But then again, you should be careful to protect yourself against the corporate giants too.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[eat here_get gas]

"...because that's another Verisign domain which just got more expensive.
..."

my .net @ registrar.com) went from 9.95yr USD to 29.95yr USD, with the same single home page and single email address services i had for the previous 5 yrs before (first year was .99yr USD)...no explanation for rate increase either, and my email asking why is still unanswered..although they processed my credit card and sent a form-reply.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[eat here_get gas]

yep, right here:

http://www.adameve.com/

Re:Can't say I mind...

[techno-vampire]

I'm sorry if what I posted pushed one of your buttons; it wasn't intended.

What I meant by "inappropriate" is that .com means commercial, and since my site is strictly a vanity site, .com wasn't the most appropriate tld for me. I could have taken .info, but my hosting company was charging the same for .us as for .com, so that seemed the most reasonable choice for me.

One thing I've been seeing lately is people using .com for the most frivolous reasons. As an example, I know a pair of yuppies who registered a domain just to host photos of their infant daughter instead of putting them on their own site. Naturally, they made it a .com even though .info would have been far more appropriate.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[porneL]

If they can't afford $10/year they probably can't afford internet connection to set up and maintain the site either.

Anyway, there's always myspace and such that will give you "web presence" without charging you for it.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[LaskoVortex]

Let me be more direct with my question: WHY DO YOU CARE?

Re:Can't say I mind...

[techno-vampire]

Why do I care? It's the difference between doing things right, and doing them wrong. And, for that matter, what difference does it make to you what I think? If you like putting sites for baby pictures on a .com, go right ahead, I'm not stopping you. I may have an unflattering opinion of you, but I doubt that will stop you.

Re:Can't say I mind...

[LaskoVortex]

doing things right, and doing them wrong

These things are the domain of religion. Praise the god of domain names!

The USA: Land of Competition

[The Fanta Menace]

The United States is really big on competition. Everyone else has to compete. Why is this monopoly allowed to exist?

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The United States is really big on competition. Correction - the united states TALKS really big on competition.

The only real competition that the government cares about is who can shove the most 'campaign funds' into each politician's pockets.

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[AnonymousCactus]

The problem is that there is a single list that someone has to manage and that someone has to get paid for it.

Competition may be at work here, but not in the way you want. The competition is apparently in bidding for the contract. But then, that is only competition if ICANN makes the bidding competitive.

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[juliandemarchi]

This is the reason OpenNIC (http://www.opennicproject.org) was created. Sure it is not that popular, and sure no one not configured to use OpenNIC nameservers can not see their gTLDs. But their very existance is a great sign that some people are fed up with this U.S controlled DNS system! OpenNIC provide very fast DNS servers located all over the globe and by using it you are showing that you do not support the U.S controlled namesystem. Lets end this monopoly of the namesystem and start supporting the alternative roots! Only you can change they way things are, we are not forced to use the ICANN root servers.

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[Anonymous Coward]

a great sign that some people are fed up with this U.S controlled DNS system! Get your own internet.

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[the_womble]

The US used to be the land of competition - which is why it became so economically successful.

Things have changed: they broke up Standard Oil and AT & T, but they have not broken up Microsoft, and current regulation of telecoms is pretty poor.

It is not just a US problem either. "Business friendly" governments and regulators all over the world are prepared to accept fairly weak arguments for tolerating monopolies, and seem to be quite happy to regard oligopoly as an adequate level of competition.

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[TheSpoom]

...they broke up Standard Oil and AT & T...

And in AT&T's case, have all but allowed them to reform.

Re:The USA: Land of Competition

[debocracy]

They broke up ATT in 1984. It's BAAACK, bigger and badder. Standard Oil was broken up in the early 1900s. Now there are 3 major oil companies who work in collusion with one another and are raking in obscene profits while war rages in Iraq and we pay nearly $4 per gallon at the pump. Global media is controlled by 5+- corporations. There is NO effective antitrust law. America is ruled by corporate oligopolies and monopolies. Competition is for schmucks. Cooperation yields the highest effective gains for humanity and our mother earth (and earthshaking profits, have you a mind to rape your neighbor.)

inflation

[TheSHAD0W]

That'll be what, 1 Euro by then?

Re:inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

inflation != depreciation

Re:inflation

[TheSHAD0W]

Or devaluation... :-P

Re:Inflation

[Raenex]

They may even be getting screwed. You're crazy if you think registering a name in a database takes $9, weak dollar or not.

Re:inflation

[jciarlan]

That'll be what, 1 Euro by then? that should probably have been 'insightful' instead of 'funny'

Value of the once almighty dollar.

[lancejjj]

increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN But that 7% increase is in U.S. dollars.

Given the recent drop of the value of the dollar, that means that much of the rest of the world whose currency isn't based on the US dollar will see a 1% price drop, instead of a 8% price drop.

Re:Value of the once almighty dollar.

[ceoyoyo]

I calculate it to be in the 13% price drop neighborhood.... I wonder if my registrar will pass on the savings to me? I suspect not.

Prices need to go up much further

[Salgat]

I am amazed that such a valuable commodity is so cheap still, especially when the low price only benefits those who purchase massive amounts of domains. I wish the prices were at least $20 a year.

Re:Prices need to go up much further

[timmarhy]

the 1990's called they want their dot com boom idea's back.

Re:Prices need to go up much further

[Anonymous Coward]

the 1990's called they want their dot com boom idea's back.

Why would they want the back of the idea? That hardly even makes sense.

Re:Prices need to go up much further

[Loconut1389]

apparently you don't run a bunch of non-profit sites on your own dime or with a limited budget. Thanks for your support.

some more info here...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/03/feel-like-paying-more/

You kids... and your short memories...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when domains finally dropped from the $100 starting point (for two years)? Yeah, $9 is nothing.

Cheap price

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW!!! Only $9!!! That is 1/10 the price the last time I looked into buying a domain name. Maybe I should buy one before the rates go back up.

I dont understand

[JimboFBX]

I dont understand- is this entry a joke? This is about as ground-breaking as "a local McDonald's increases $1 menu to $1.05 menu!" In other news, inflation was 8% last year!

Re:I dont understand

[carpe.cervisiam]

I dont understand- is this entry a joke? This is about as ground-breaking as "a local McDonald's increases $1 menu to $1.05 menu!" In other news, inflation was 8% last year! Wow. I want to live in your world. The magical land where an inflation rate of 8% translates into a 5% increase in the price of goods and services.

Re:I dont understand

[Jarjarthejedi]

Bad Math Proves A Point!

(Kudos to anyone who gets the reference)

Re:I dont understand

[eclectro]

Wow. I want to live in your world. The magical land where an inflation rate of 8% translates into a 5% increase in the price of goods and services. Also in his world, that Conner 120 MB hard drive that cost $150 in 1993, would cost $215 now.

Re:I dont understand

[JasonTik]

Unless the point was that McDonalds was eating the other three cents lost to inflation, and actually being screwed, themselves, implying VeriSign did the same (or was contractually obligated to do the same).

Re:I dont understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow really?

Re:I dont understand

[JimboFBX]

Bingo.

Well, in Australia

[Psychotria]

I would love to pay just $9.00 for a registration fee. Try > $100 here for a .com.au :/

Re:Well, in Australia

[CastrTroy]

I think last time I updated my .ca address it was $20 a year. Not that expensive. $100 a year seems a little prohibitive. Especially if it's just for personal use.

Re:Well, in Australia

[neonmonk]

.com.au is restricted to businesses in Australia. You have to actually supply an Australian Business Number (ABN) to register it.

$100 is a bit of an exaggeration. I paid $70 for two years and registered a .net.au & .com.au (so $35 for two years)

You just have to shop around.

Re:Well, in Australia

[Dahamma]

Yeah, but to give the majority of /. users context... was that when AU$ was 0.75 US$ or the currently awful (for me anyway! ;) 0.92 US$...

Re:Well, in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay ~$5/year incl. VAT for my .de domain. The .de CCTLD is the largest country code domain and the second largest domain after .com. The registry is run by a cooperative of ISPs.

Re:Well, in Australia

[Psychotria]

You're right. I should have checked some more. My registrar _last time_ I updated my domain names was $180 for two years (so $90/year). I just checked their website and it's now $80 for two years. The price seems to have come down, probably because of increased competition. I apologise for not checking that first.

Re:Well, in Australia

[Archon-X]

Which australia do you live in?

Prices start at $35AUD.

Re:Well, in Australia

[kimba]

The wholesale price for a .com.au domain is $AU22.55/2yrs, i.e. $AU11.27/yr or $US10.37/yr. If you are paying over $100, that's you're own business.

Re:Well, in Australia

[imbaczek]

there's a chance that after such a domain expires, it won't be taken by a parked ad display, as is the case with expired .coms. this is one reason I actually like the idea of higher prices.

Re:Well, in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Wha? Try AU$44... http://www.planetdomain.com.au/

Re:Well, in Australia

[FiestaFan]

I would love to pay just $9.00 for a registration fee. Try > $100 here for a .com.au :/ Why use .com.au?

Inflation

[copponex]

The dollar is dropping like a rock. If they are an international company, they probably have no choice. When did they make this contract? They may even be getting screwed.

Re:yes but I am still the greatest

[Anonymous Coward]

I will be feared by some group of scaley documants with the desk lady for you shaving cauldrone.

How soon people forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that domains used to cost $140 a year. We only DREAMED of $10 domains back in 1999.

Re:How soon people forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

Domains used to be free, along with address allocations.

Re:How soon people forget...

[GeorgeMcBay]

And yet other people forget that before $140 domains, domain registrations were free, first-come first-served. I still own a couple of domains that I registered for free and didn't pay any fees on for the first few years I owned them.

Re:How soon people forget...

[Phroggy]

My recollection is that in 1997 they were $100 for two years, $50/year thereafter, and Network Solutions was the only registrar.

Also, domain registrations, along with any updates, were done by sending an e-mail in a particular format. You could fill out a form on Network Solutions' web site, which would send you an e-mail with all the fields filled out that you could just send back to them.

How much is a domain worth?

[fermion]

Honestly, domains are dirt cheap, and $9 a domain is a far cry from $50 a year that we paid 15 years ago, but certainly more than when they could theoretically be had for free. Of course a cautions business will gather up every conceivable domain in every conceivable TLD. This means that where where one might buy a domain or two for $100 every two years, now even a small business might buy tens times that may, at a cost of perhaps a few hundred dollars per year. Of course, in the scheme of rolling out a domain, what is a few hundred dollars.

I have a few domains, nothing serious, and i would not be unwilling to pay more under certain conditions. Mostly these would have to with transfer and the amount of time a registrar can sit on a domain without releasing it. I appreciate having a 30 day waiting period to repurchase a domain, but I have seen 90 days+ where the register is allowed to hold the domain hostage. Clearly this a revenue generating tactic, and if it is to end must be replaced with other revenue.

Re:How much is a domain worth?

[eh2o]

Verisign does not "own" the domains -- they provide a service, not a product. The worth of a domain itself is irrelevant. The only question is, how much does it cost to operate the TLD servers and still make a reasonable profit margin (reasonable meaning that the employees of said operation would be sufficiently compensated to keep the operation running smoothly). I'd guess that in bulk, the cost is on the order of a few cents per domain.

Obsolete

[racyrefinedraj]

Why do we have TLDs anymore, anyway? Why can't I just register http://yourname/ ? Since their original intent is both broken (not all .coms are commercial etc) and obsolete (people just google for things anyway), why don't we just say that a domain is a string of alphanumeric characters terminated by a /

Re:Obsolete

[lintux]

I thought at least /. readers knew the tubes have more to offer than just the world wide web...

Re:Obsolete

[onebuttonmouse]

Technically, all domains are already terminated with a "." to denote the root of the DNS system, "/" is an HTTP construct. Try missing "." out of a BIND zone file for fun results!

Personally, I hate the way nominet handles SLDs in my country more, I can only register:

.co.uk
.ltd.uk
.me.uk
.net.uk
.org.uk
.plc.uk

Why can't I just have stocksy.uk, nominet? Why?

The contract does not end in 2012

[karl.auerbach]

The contract with Verisign does not end in 2012.

ICANN granted to Verisign a perpetual right of renewal.

In other words, unless Verisign goes out and illegally clubs baby seals (and maybe even if they do) they get the right to renew the contract again and again and again and again...

Has ICANN ever bothered to consider the actual costs that Verisign incurs to deliver those domain name registrations? No.

It has been estimated that the amount may be as low as $0.02 per year. In which case ICANN has created a guaranteed profit to Verisign of about $420,000,000 eavery year - with you and me paying.

Re:The contract does not end in 2012

[freedom_india]

Have you investigated the possibility that some ICANN execs may "suddenly" be "recruited" by Verisign at$1.2 million a year?
ICANN should be investigates by the FBI for those reasons.
Secondly ICANN should be forced to sign agreements with its execs that they will NOT ever join any company owned even partially by verisign or its current execs for next 12 years.

Re:The contract does not end in 2012

[rastoboy29]

damn straight!

Re:The contract does not end in 2012

[Kalriath]

ICANN should be investigates by the FBI for those reasons. Wont happen. The US government isn't dumb enough to interfere directly in ICANN operations with the eyes of every country of the planet already glaring at them asking "for what reason does the US control the internet?"

And heck, they're right! Why should the very core of the internet be controlled by the laws of a single government?

If $9 is "The Max"...

[prostoalex]

...you might have a low FICO score.

Keys to profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1:monopoly

Step 2:????????

Step 3:Profit!

Re:Keys to profit

[e9th]

Monopolies ordinarily omit step 2.

Seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously... is ANYONE really surprised that they didn't increase the price by the maximum allowed amount?

$9.00?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, all of nine 9.0 dollars a year? And this is finincial hardship, or pain?

I would make domain registration 900/yr.

That should get rid of all those typo domains, and domain squatting.

The IT and open source monkeys don't need their own domain names, that's what sourceforge is for.

Re:$9.00?

[Warll]

You know what I'd think that would work great! Twenty years ago mind you. I don't know if you've noticed but the internet has grown, like a lot.

Re:$9.00?

[lintux]

> The IT and open source monkeys don't need their own domain names, that's what sourceforge is for.

Bzzt, wrong! SourceForge is there for OSS authors who are too lazy to write a website, docs or anything else and just want to drop a tarball online somewhere and forget about it. :-P

(Yes, I know there are some exceptions. But this is my main annoyance with SourceForge.)

Re:$9.00?

[justinlee37]

That should get rid of all those typo domains, and domain squatting.

It would also make many legitimate business ventures unprofitable. Yes, you don't need a domain name of your own to give information away, but if you want to make money off of that information, you do. And many online business ventures such as social networking and online journalism give services away for free, supporting themselves with advertisement revenue. If the cost of maintaining a website increased dramatically, it would put many of these smaller websites out of business by undermining their profitability. That would, in turn, reduce the amount of free things on the web. And don't you like free things? I think I'm willing to put up with a little spam for services like photobucket.com and okcupid.com.

Speaking of inflation...

[OakDragon]

...somebody tell the GoDaddy girl that her tits are going to have to get bigger.

Re:Speaking of inflation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one here that remembers paying 50USD per year to register a domain?

Re:Speaking of inflation...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Maybe inflation will help? It's clearly the source of her ballooning assets so far.

Re:Speaking of inflation...

[Phroggy]

Am I the only one here that remembers paying 50USD per year to register a domain? Not only that, but the initial registration had to be for at least two years. $50 was the annual renewal fee, but you had to pay the first $100 up front.

Read the Contract

[Anonymous Coward]

The contract is on the ICANN site. People should read it before making statements that aren't true. Verisign can not raise the fee every year, only four of the six years in a contract period. Look at the payments they need to make to ICANN: $1.5 million rising to $3 million a quarter over the contract. Look at the SLAs for .com and .net (5-100 milliseconds), 100% availability per year on some services or penalties. How many company's can provide that level of service for the millions or billions of queries they get a day, especially from the squatters that register hundreds of thousands of names a day and release them during the grace period. Verisign doesn't make any money from the squatters yet has to store and report on all of that data. If people think the business is such a cash cow and easy to do, why didn't they bid on the contract? They could be billionaires by now.

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/net/
http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/com/

Re:Read the Contract

[Lord Flipper]

The contract is on the ICANN site. People should read it before making statements that aren't true

Absolutely correct. Somebody give this AC the max in mod points. The whole post was informative and interesting.

Re:Read the Contract

[Flopper]

Verisign doesn't make any money from the squatters yet has to store and report on all of that data.

But is this "grace period" of domain tasting actually laid out in the registry agreement or is this VeriSign's courtesy to the registrars^Wsquatters?

Re:Read the Contract

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign also isn't increasing just to increase. They are actually losing money in total, which will be corrected by the end of this year(by divesting- not 7% whatever).

They are increasing their network/server/node count by a factor of 10 in 2 years time. I'm sorry, but 7% ain't squat when you're are required to have 99.97% uptime for planet Earth. The contract is up for renewal in a few years. So will you feel better when verisign competes with everyone in the World, and still wins it hands down? This is not something you can compare to a lemonade stand. It's a utility, that absolutely must stay up or you all die. Including this website and your rantings in the wilderness.

http://www.verisign.com/information-services/ATLAS/Project_Titan/index.html

They aren't screwing us. If you want to see screwed, give it to France or China.

Microsoft....

[wilhil]

I am sorry to say it, but I just can not see how Microsoft can be called a monopoly, I am currently a open source user and am posting this comment from Mozilla Firefox running on Ubuntu. At the end of the day, there is choice there and if people want to, they can change their operating system and live without any commercial software, I have been doing this for the past few months and am generally having a good time. Now, if I want a .com name, I am FORCED to pay the extra, no questions asked. There is clearly a monopoly here, but no one seems to care or do anything. Fine you can get other domain names, however I am sure that at least 80% (if not 99%) of people would classify the internet as ".com".

Re:Microsoft....

[plasmacutter]

I think you underestimate the capacities of 80% - 90% of people.

Granted theyre pretty much lemmings but even the most tech illiterate person I know (and my family is full of *cringe* doctors) knows .org and .net exist .de .jp etc might be another matter.

Re:Microsoft....

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine you can get other domain names, however I am sure that at least 80% (if not 99%) of people would classify the internet as ".com". Fine you can install other operating systems, however I am sure that at least 80% (if not 99%) of people would classify the operating system as "windows".

Bleh.

By "reasonable" you mean "expected from monopoly"

[whorfin]

They're a friggin monopoly. give them a "maximum allowable increase", they have zero incentive to not 'achieve'. Every resller markets themselves and then comes home to poppa, the ecosystem is theirs.

(sigh)

Duh

[EdIII]

increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN

That is what you get when you agree to an exclusive contract. Normally, the company asking for the exclusive gives good deals to obtain it. Exclusive is almost never a good option to the company giving it, and there needs to be some pretty good incentives to do so. Really Good. Like AT&T giving a portion of the iPhone sales to Apple good.

However, it seems to never work out that way with governments, or governmental agencies. They take up the "poop chute" by the company asking for the exclusive. After all, it's not their rear ends that is getting the treatment is it? Those deals really are not exclusive as much as they are "negotiated in a back room".

So I am not surprised at all. I would expect a company with leverage like that to keep raising the prices, and as often as possible. So if anybody wants to complain about that, then maybe we should start by getting rid of any exclusive contracts with ICANN.

Just my opinion....

Why is this news?

[dmsuperman]

Why is this news? This is a once a year payment, is it not? Even with a part time job averaging less than 15 hours a week I could afford a domain for myself. Unless you're buying thousands or millions of domains, this isn't really going to affect you...

Too Many Domains -- I Want InterNIC $100/yr

[Jizzbug]

There are too many domains. The Internet sucks! I want $100 a year like the old days and everything controlled by InterNIC!!

Re:Too Many Domains -- I Want InterNIC $100/yr

[Jesus_666]

Who needs InterNIC? Just pass updated hosts files to all computers connected to the network once the topology changes. It worked and it was good!

Mate, where do you register your domains!?

[daBass]

http://cheapdomains.com.au/ does $38 for 2 years. I have mine there and they are perfectly legit, no hidden costs. Just register, enter your name servers (I use http://everydns.net/ and you are good to go.

Ouch... 9 dollars.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're breaking my balls here VeriSign, breaking my balls.

Mod parent up

[lintux]

Those challenge-response mail systems don't solve the spam problem, they only move it away from the user. People who use (and) write this shite should be banned from the tubes.

ICANN.....Should Really Be.....ICANNOT

[IHC Navistar]

Is possible to set up a working web address without going through ICANN?

Unprofitable?

[Bootarn]

It's like the situation here in Sweden. The government is increasing the rent on all apartments to shorten the lines, but that will leave more people on the streets. Increasing the domain price may perhaps make the spammers think twice, but it will not stop them. It will instead affect honest users to the degree that they may not be able to pay for their domains.
Bad move.

Cry me a river

[MindStalker]

I remember paying $75 for a domain back in 1997.

The value of trust.

[argent]

If you google for Verisign's slogan (the value of trust), what do you get?

http://www.lindacaroll.com/value-of-trust.html

That one comes up higher than Verisign's own page for me.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/the_value_of_trust_in_2007/
http://www.infinitumdesign.com/verisign.html

My own experience with Verisign's domain business comes way down the list:

http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/io/vs/

The value of trust? That and $1.99 gets you a Doubleshot.

Oh, come on, stop propagating this nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't, shareholders will become former shareholders, and/or try to find reasons to sue.

Do you seriously think shareholders can sue a company they own the shares on just because they think the company ought to have made more money than it did?

It is certainly possible for shareholders to sue for serious mismanagement of the company, but serious mismanagement doesn't mean just that the management made an error: it means that management did something pretty damn serious, like deliberately act in a way that screws shareholders over because of a conflict of interest. For example, some folks were talking about suing the management of Bear Stearns for agreeing to sell the company for $2/share, because they thought that the decision was very obviously not good for shareholders.

It takes very, very little argument for VeriSign to demonstrate that charging what they do now for domains is not obviously against the interests of shareholders. All they need to say is something along these lines: that they believe that the demand for domain names is elastic, so that higher prices would lead to less demand for domain names, less volume, and therefore, fewer revenues in the aggregate. They don't even have to be right about it.

7% is .com only, .net is 10%

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the article and the summary oversimplify the percentage increase. The summary says:

VeriSign is jacking up prices for the .com and .net domains for the second year running, increasing both by the maximum 7% allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN. The summary accurately reflects the article, but betrays a failure of basic arithmetic. The article says the .net fee is going from $3.85 to $4.23 (the summary doesn't mention specific prices) and $3.85 + 7% < $4.23. The actual rate of increase for .net is 10%. To quote the .net agreement:

Commencing on 1 January 2007, the Service Fee charged during a calendar year for each annual increment of a new and renewal domain name registration and for transferring a domain name registration from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another, shall not exceed the highest Service Fee charged during the preceding calendar year multiplied by 1.10.