Do you own any valuable domains? Can you imagine paying a renewal fee of $1,000, or $10,000 or whatever the market can bare? Listen to my friend and Internet pioneer Ken McCarthy:
- That’s impossible, right? Not only is it not impossible, but ICANN – the domain regulation entity that controls .org, .info and .biz – has a proposal on the table right now that make such prices possible.
If they get away with it, you can be sure that Verisign which controls the .com domains will not be far behind.
or have a look at George Kirikos’ blog:
- I finally got the “official” word from Vint Cerf of ICANN, “on the record”, who confirmed that my interpretation is correct, that differential/tiered pricing on a domain-by-domain basis would not be forbidden under the .biz/info/org proposed contracts. This means that the registries could charge $100,000/yr for sex.biz, $25,000/yr for movies.org, etc. if they wanted to—it would not be forbidden the way the proposed contracts are currently written.
What’s behind these moves at ICANN? We don’t know and ICANN isn’t telling. Neither are the registries. But whatever the agenda is, the lack of transparency, short comment period, and monopolistic structure of the contracts smells like an abuse of power, so a better question to ask is, what can one do about it?
For now, since the public comment period has expired, you can help by giving the story sunshine. If you haven’t registered at www.Digg.com, now’s a good time — register and Digg away at the stories I’ve linked to above.
