[ALAC] Proposed Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement

Bastiaan Goslings bastiaan.goslings at ams-ix.net
Mon May 8 09:54:07 UTC 2017


(& re the ‘On February 1st, 2017 it goes from $7.46 to $8.20 ($0.74)’: that is the $8.20 mentioned in 7.3?)



> On 8 May 2017, at 11:48, Bastiaan Goslings <bastiaan.goslings at ams-ix.net> wrote:
> 
> I wonder where authoritative numbers are to be found with regard to price increases over the years - and how these compare to other gTLD’s
> 
> I took the 2012 $7.85 from https://icannwiki.org/Verisign
> 
> 'In January 2012, Verisign raised the wholesale prices of .com and .net registration by 7%, increasing the price from $7.34 to $7.85. Registrars generally passed the price increase on to their customers.'
> 
> However e.g. https://onlinedomain.com/2017/01/19/domain-name-news/net-domain-name-registrations-renewals-will-cost-com-february-1st/ mentions a different 2012 price and also that ‘On February 1st, 2017 it goes from $7.46 to $8.20 ($0.74)’
> 
> (That a.o. tells me the current price is not capped at $5.40, it supposedly has been increasing annually by 10%)  
> 
> 
>> On 8 May 2017, at 11:07, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 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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