[ALAC] Proposed Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement

Tue May 9 15:50:35 UTC 2017

I posted my comments on “general comments” since for some reason (did not find out which one, I could not add to At large wiki page)
Here my comments:

Dear all
  Due some time working here talking with new gTLDs I know, may be better than others not so involved, the content of the Registry Agreements for the new registries.
The general idea I am reading in this draft is to adequate similar terms to legacy TLDs.
 Prices – setting limit for almost 9 US$, in my opinion does not impact directly registrants due two reasons: registrars will negotiate best prices based on market demand and since Registries had the obligation to sell to all interested certificated registrars, this makes the basic price be almost the same – to end users the registrar is the key interface to control prices.
Verisign used to be controlled basically due .com, by antitrust laws in US ( and so by NTIA) since all registries are, per definition, a monopoly and .com was out of doubt the larger registry under one string.
Due such control, I believe, Verisign is also compliance with all requirements under .Net , as stated by ICANN, to avoid any problem with local authorities.
 Demand for Escrow format, BRDA and API spec as ICANN is demanding for new gTLDs, I see as very positive for end users, as relevant guaranties. New Whois is also relevant for improve data privacy.
Other points as they had incorporated to .ORG agreement, I believe shall be repeated, it was discussed when was time for the new agreement under dot org, since both registries had same previous agreement and we shall avoid different agreements for each registry.
 In general,
I haven’t see any point that I would raise as not of end use interest.
Vanda Scartezini

Vanda Scartezini
Polo Consultores Associados
Av. Paulista 1159, cj 1004
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Sorry for any typos. 
HAPPY 2017!

On 5/8/17, 5:04 AM, "alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Bastiaan Goslings" <alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of bastiaan.goslings at ams-ix.net> wrote:

    Yep, Maureen ‘made the call’ but I had scanned through the document and agreed with her.

    Seeing the message you pointed us to, Alan, I have to confess that was not something that triggered me. Not sure what to think of it. The line of reasoning sounds plausible, however I cannot judge its merits:

    - ‘My company is opposed to the proposed contract’: is that leap.com? Do they have an agenda here?

    - ‘There should be regular tender processes for operation of the registry for a fixed term, as is standard procedure for procurement contracts’: is that the case, is it applicable here? If so, what is be the reason there is no ’tender process’ for the renewal of the .NET contract?

    - What does he mean with ‘the sweetheart deal that ICANN (pretending to negotiate in the public interest) has bestowed upon Verisign’? I assume it’s the existing agreement - what is so ’sweet’ about it?

    - ‘Where the price used to be $4.95/yr, and has skyrocketed to $8.20/yr, a whopping increase of 65.66% during the 6 year term of the prior contract’ - Ok. How does that compare to other gtld registrar fees per domain name? ‘Under competition (…), the annual registry fees would be much lower, perhaps $2/yr or even less’. Is that so? Is there a list available somewhere? For .com it’s the same as for .NET, at least it was with the price increase in 2012 when it went to $7.85/yr. A 35cts price increase in 5 years time is not quite as dramatic as the author is framing it to be IMO

    - Is it fair to assume the price will increase by 10% per year? 

    regards,
    Bastiaan

    > On 8 May 2017, at 07:52, Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard at gmail.com> wrote:
    > 
    > Ah... Ok.  By "we:, you have to mean the lawyers we have on the ALAC and within At-Large who may also have ploughed through 133 pages of the actual agreement, but with a lot more understanding than I had.  But noone got back to us, I'm afraid. Bastiaan may have gotten more out of it, but I made the call.
    > 
    > I was only looking for anything that might have been of interest to end-users who don't really have any say about how much a gtld is going to cost them. Is commenting on a document that  ICANN's million dollar lawyers have developed, really going to make any difference?  
    > 
    > M 
    > 
    > 
    > On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 5:01 PM, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca> wrote:
    > No, I wouldn't. That's why we are here.
    > 
    > In any case, all I was doing was pointing out that there was once comment posted about pricing and was wondering if people thought that this was something we should comment on as well.
    > 
    > As the CCT-RT has pointed out, it is difficult to know whether this is an outrageous annual increase outstripping cost-of-living increases or a TLD that is in-demand and due to ICANN price restrictions that are not on other TLDs, is still under-priced and the 10% is only catch-up.
    > 
    > Alan
    > 
    > 
    > At 08/05/2017 12:23 AM, 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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