Good News For Domainers & Registrars – Verisign Loses Automatic Price Increase But Keeps .com

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Joe Alagna

verisign-logoIn a document signed November 29, 2012, the U.S. Department of Commerce took away Verisign’s automatic price increase provisions on .com domain names. Previous contracts with ICANN had allowed Verisign to automatically increase prices during the term of the agreement which lasted for several years. They did not have to justify the increase each time; just once at the initial negotiation. And they took the opportunity to raise prices at every occasion.

I typically wouldn’t be critical of price increases for most registries. But the Verisign registry for .com is different because of its size. It completely eclipses the size of most registries in the world. According to their most recent “State of the Domain” report, the .com regsitry contains over 100 Million domain names. The next largest registry in the world is DeNIC, the company that manages the country code top level domain for Germany, .de with just over 15 million TLDs.

In defense of Verisign, they do a great job of managing the .com, .net, and other registries that they manage. They are the company for the job and deserve to keep that contract. But automatic price increases not requiring justification aren’t right for any company with that kind of market dominance.

com-net-tv

Here’s a few exerpts from the contract:

REASON(S) FOR AMENDMENT

This agreement is hereby amended to (1) approve the .com Reglstry Agreement (as revised); (2) cap the price of .com registrations at $7.85 and allow VeriSign to take price increases only upon prior written approval of the Department; (3) permit Verisign to petition the Department for relief from price restrictions if it can demonstrate that it no longer has market power; (4) extend the expiration date until November 30, 2018; and (5) affirm that the Department’s approval of the .com Registry Agreement does not confer antitrust immunity.

EXCEPT AS SPECIFIED IN THIS AMENDMENT, ALL PREVIOUS TERMS AND CONDITIONS REMAIN IN EFFECT.

2. The Maximum Price charged by VeriSign for registration or renewal of a .com domain name during the term of the .com Registry Agreement approved hereby shall not exceed US $7.85; provided, however, that VeriSign shall be entitled to increases in the Maximum Price in accordance with Section 7.3( d)(ii) of the .com Registry Agreement; provided further that VeriSign shall not exercise such right unless the Department provides prior written approval that the exercise of such right will serve the public interest, such approval not to be unreasonably withheld.

Read the Agreement…

Posted in Aftermarket, Domain Names, ICANN, Registrars | 1 Comment

New gTLD Progress Report; Are You Confused?

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Joe Alagna

Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

I recently had a question from a new gTLD applicant who is facing no contention but feels that all the information being put out by ICANN only serves to confuse people more. I tried to summarize the best and worse case scenarios related to where their application stands. After going through that process, I realized that the message is generally applicable to many applicants today (who are not facing contention), so I’ve modified it a bit and am posting it here.

When Will Your Application Go Live?

That’s a reasonable question. I know how hard it can be to navigate ICANN. In a sentence or two… The best case scenario is that you’ll have your new gTLD live and working between May and August of 2013. The worse case scenario is that the process could be blocked by legal or government objections for several years. Here is a more detailed breakdown with benchmarks at a very basic level:

Objective/End Result:

1. A New gTLD Contract is executed between you and ICANN, and…
2. Your TLD is “delegated” to the root (of the Internet) meaning the gTLD goes live and is in your control.

Your Situation Now:

  1. ICANN has stated that no contracts will occur before the March 2013 ICANN meeting.
  2. You have passed the Administrative Checks
  3. You have passed the DNS Stability test (all apps have passed)
  4. You have received no Early Warnings from ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee (GAC)
  5. You have no obvious String Similarity Issues, subject to ICANN’s evaluation which should be released very soon (a recent progress report said November 2012)
  6. You have no obvious Geographic Name Similarities, subject to ICANN’s evaluation which should be released very soon (a recent progress report said November 2012)

Best Case Scenario Moving Forward

  1. On Dec 17, the priority drawing comes out in your favor (let’s say less than 500 or so)
  2. In Feb. or so, you pass the Background Screening
  3. In Feb. or so, you pass the Registry Services Screening
  4. You receive no Public Objections related to String Confusion, Legal Rights, Limited Public Interest, or Community You receive no negative GAC Advice
  5. Between March and August, you pass the Financial Evaluation
  6. Between March and August, you pass the Technical & Operational Evaluation
  7. Between March and August, you execute a contract with ICANN
  8. No lawsuits are filed that extend the process
  9. Between March and August, your gTLD is delegated to the root of the Internet and goes live.

Possible Worst Case Scenarios

Worst case scenarios include the opposites of what you see above, which can either stop the application or add 12 to 18 months to the process of getting your new gTLD working. Subject to the results of the drawing on the 17th, many applications could see something much closer to the Best Case Scenario and get their gTLD(s) working by the middle or end of 2013.

These are just my opinions. I’m sure I’ve missed some possibilities but my view is that things are going well so far for many applications. I hope this is helpful.

Posted in Domain Names, ICANN, New Top Level Domains, Registries | Comments Off on New gTLD Progress Report; Are You Confused?

ICANN Publicizes GAC Early Warnings

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Joe Alagna

ICANN held true to its word today and made GAC (Government Advisory Council) Early Warnings public on its website.

If you applied for a new TLD and your application for a new gTLD has a GAC early warning, you can back out for an 80% refund. For those who need more information you can write to:
[email protected].

I’ve read through some of the early warnings and here are my thoughts:

Australia filed the most early warnings with a total of 129, followed by Germany with 20, and France with 19.

After reading through the Australian government’s objections, I’m happy to see that someone is on the ball. They targeted the applications by companies (especially Amazon) whose applications seek to gain monopoly rights to TLD strings in which they have no trademark rights. I wrote about this earlier this year. So did a few other prominent bloggers. For Amazon to own complete control over .book or .author should terrify publishers and writers across the English-speaking world. That’s too much power in one powerful company’s hands.

The Australian government should be applauded for catching this and calling the large corporations out on their intentions. Privately held gTLDs, controlled by one large interest is not in the spirit of ICANN’s charter and does not “promote competition”. Why is the U.S. Government so laissez faire on this? These are the exact kinds of things where governments need more involvement and here they ignore it. I’m surprised and disappointed, but I’ll end my political discussion right there.

There was an interesting advisory filed by the US Government about Radix Registry where their only warning was that the applications included a reference to an FBI email address. This had to simply be an oversight on the part of Radix and should be simple to correct.

There were a about 18 Early Warnings on .hotel. France made what seems to me to be a self-serving and over-reaching argument that .hotel should be limited to hotels with justification that their hospitality industry is very large and that their tourism agency, “About France” uses a tourism code, etc.

Germany suggests that various strings like .hotel/.hotels/.hoteis be treated together by ICANN’s evaluation process.

Australia rightfully hit the .hotel applications where the applicant was trying to keep it to themselves rather than allow the general Internet population to register them.

Several governments issued warnings about .health as a string. These contained some possibly valid concerns about the potential for fraud or abuse in the health sector, especially in certain countries where consumers are vulnerable.

Overall, this is an encouraging day in the life of new gTLDs. With few exceptions, governments acted ethically, responsibly, and with proper restraint. If you’d like a copy of the GAC Early Warnings in a spreadsheet, go here.

I did this just for my own understanding. It’s nice to be able to sort and categorize things.

Review the Early Warnings at ICANN Website… | Source: ICANN | Date posted: 11/21/2012

Other blogger’s comments about new TLD applicants keeping their TLDs all to themselves:

Read the story… | Source: CNET | Date posted: 11/21/2012

Read the story… | Source: Circle ID | Date posted: 11/21/2012

Posted in Domain Name News, ICANN, New Top Level Domains, Registries | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on ICANN Publicizes GAC Early Warnings

Things Heating Up for New gTLDs

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Joe Alagna

ICANN issued some great news today sharing progress on the new GTLDs.  Highlights of the “Information Paper” (see the actual document for full details; link is below):

  • As of November 13, 2012, there are 13 requests for withdrawal of applications.
  • There are no objections filed so far.
  • Applicants have submitted 169 application change requests.
  • 29 change requests have been reviewed and approved.
  • DNS stability review are completed. All strings have passed.
  • Geographic names review is close to completion. Geographic review panel will be releasing clarifying questions on November 26.
  • Registry services review is expected to be completed in January, 2013.
  • Financial and technical evaluations are expected to be complete in August, 2013 (an extension of the previously published date of June, 2013.
  • Initial background screenings reviews are complete and some applicants will receive requests for additional information soon.
  • The time to respond to clarifying questions has been extended to 4 weeks (from 2).  They will be issued in January 2013 (through TAS) to avoid the holidays.
  • First publication of initial results are expected to come out in March 2013, however, completion of initial evaluation will be pushed out to August, 2013.
  • After the Clarifying Question pilot, they’ve decided to modify the language of clarifying questions to be more specific and to increase the character limits to 7000 characters per question (plus attachments).
  • Advisories for Q25, Q30, Q48, and Q50 will be published this month to help applicants prepare in advance.  Applicants will not be allowed to interact with evaluation panels.
  • Geographic names clarifying questions will be issued on November 26, 2012 through the CSC portal and TAS will reopen on November 26, 2012 to allow applicants to respond to clarifying questions.
  • The comment period for the prioritization draw has closed, comments will be posted soon. Notifications of the draw will be sent to applicants on November 16, 2012 and the draw will take place on December 17, 2012 at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles.
  • Ticket sales will take place December 12 through 16 and on the morning of December 17 (God willing, I know where I’m going to be on that day).

More Details Here: ICANN Update – November 14, 2012


More Details Here: ICANN Update – November 14, 2012

Posted in Domain Name News, New gTld Auctions, New Top Level Domains, Registries | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Things Heating Up for New gTLDs