[ALAC] Proposed Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement

[Seun Ojedeji]

Hello,

>From my quick read of the agreement it seem to be that a renewal option is
already existing (ofcourse subject to compliance of certain requirement)
and nothing major is changing in that section (ref: section 4.2). I think
it's just appropriate to renew if all is fine, I don't see why things
should be opened to competitive bidding.

Secondly I am not sure where the commenter's pricing forecast comes from
but my reading of section 7.3 seem to imply a maximum price cap of 8.95 USD
with maximum of 10% annual increase from current cap of 5.4. I guess the
question to answer is whether that maximum isn't too much considering it
was initially and currently capped at 5.4USD. I personally think it is too
high as that allows for over 50% increase and 100% of the increase actually
goes to the operator (ICANN remains at .75USD). I do not see why pricing
must increase especially since there is/will be volume increase in .net and
maintenance cost usually don't increase significantly as a result of more
registration. I think justification for such price increase needs to be
made to ICANN before implementation.

Considering that the end users are ultimately the registrants who will
largely feel the effect of this pricing, I will suggest that we raise our
concern about the increase.

Regards

Sent from my LG G4
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On May 8, 2017 9:25 AM, "Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond" <ocl at gih.com> wrote:

> Dear Maureen,
>
> I am sorry but your comment got me to raise my eyebrow: we wouldn't be
> expecting an end-user to analyse these costs, but we would expect ALAC
> members to. That's why they're elected as ALAC members. If we start
> reasoning that topics in ICANN are out of scope for the ALAC because an end
> user would not be expected to analyse the topic or be directly involved in
> the topic, then we can pretty much close shop because the majority of
> topics that are treated at ICANN are complex and need prior knowledge. I
> fully subscribe to the point made by Kaili that ALAC members are the end
> user's lawyers in the ICANN process.
>
> On the .NET agreement, it is strange that, once again, the agreement would
> be just renewed and not put to a bidding process. And the commenter makes a
> good point about anti-trust laws. But for some reason, the US government
> has closed its eyes on this industry such that there is one major Registry
> player and one major Registrar player. It it for the ALAC to call for
> action? That's the question you need to ask yourselves. It is perhaps the
> fundamental question for this TLD renewal. It requires answers to two
> questions: one that requires skills and knowledge; the other that requires
> a discussion and a choice.
>
> 1. Skills and knowledge: in the case of .NET, are conditions fulfilled for
> an automatic renewal of the Registry agreement, if there is such an option?
> 2. Discussion and choice: if conditions are not met, or there is no such
> automatic renewal option, then does the ALAC want to pick this up and make
> a point, bearing in mind this could start a process with an uncertain end?
>
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
> On 08/05/2017 06:23, Maureen Hilyard wrote:
>
> But really Alan, would we be expecting the ordinary end-user to be
> analysing these costs and other sections of the document in a similar way,
> without any prior expert knowledge about the ICANN contractual bidding
> process, previous contracts and other details you have outlined? Its
> outside of our scope.
>
> On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> Maureen and Bastiaan have review the .NET Registry Agreement revisions
>> and are not recommending and ALAC statement.
>>
>> There is one comment already pointing out that there the contract (both
>> the current one and the revised one) allow for a 10$ increase in the price
>> to the registrar per year. Note that for New gTLDs, pricing is out of scope
>> of ICANN registry agreements. Based on the 2011 price of $4.65 and the 2017
>> price of 8.20, it would appear that they have used the full 10% over the
>> term of the last current agreement. The 10% rate is the same as that in the
>> current .ORG agreement. .COM presumably due to the size of the registrant
>> base is price-capped.
>>
>> The comment also says the contract should not be renewed, but rather put
>> out for competitive bidding - something that is not within ICANN's ability
>> to decide (and confirmed by the statement calling upon government
>> anti-trust action). See https://mm.icann.org/pipermail
>> /comments-net-renewal-20apr17/2017-April/000000.html.
>>
>> Alan
>>
>>
>>
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