Category — ICANN

The news broke last night that ICANN was opening the public comment period on the renewal of the contract with Verisign (current one expires at the end of this year) which once again would give Verisign a 6 year contract to operate the registry with a right to raise prices in 4 of the 6 years of its choice 7% compounded.

Back almost a year ago we wrote a story entitled What The Settlement Of The CFIT Case Means To The Cost-Of-Your .Com Registrations/Renewals.

Once the CFIT case was dismissed by the parties our fate and the price increases were sealed.

We noted in that story what the cost would be to domain holder for new registrations and  renewals though the next 12 years.

As we noted then and several times on TheDomains.com, the contracts with Verisign to run the .Com/.Net registries have a presumptive renewal provision in them.

Presumptive renewal is just what it sounds like, a contract that is pretty much automatically renewed unless Verisign really screws up in the operation of the registry.

So before I re-print the story from last May below, I’m going to anticipate the question on you’re mind, how did this happen?

Frankly we have also told this story before, but when the contract was first proposed back in 2004/2005 (before we started writing the blog)  with the guaranteed rate increase and the presumptive renewal there were only a few domainers that put together an organization to fight.

As usual accept for a handful of domainers, no one supported it financially.

This fight cost a few people a lot of money and then would have cost many millions dollars more to continue to fight.

Had domainers been organized and contributed substantial dollars to the fight at the end of the proceedings the court could have done a lot of things including invalidating the contract and throwing it open for bidding.

It’s not easy to fight a company that has a billion dollars in the bank whose whole business is threatened by the suit.

So here is our story from last May.  As the old saying goes read it and weep:

“”Now that VeriSign settled the CFIT case, I thought we should take a look at what that means in dollars and cents to domain holders.

Verisign contract to run the .Com registry (.Net too) calls for presumptive renewals  and the ability to increase the wholesale cost of domain name registrations and renewals, 7% in 4 of every 6 years.…

We are now less than one month from April 12th, the last day an application for a new gTLD can be submitted.

We now know that 294 people have paid $5K to put in an App of course each registered user can file 49 apps so the number of actually apps submitted to ICANN is higher but ICANN for some reason refuses to release the number of apps received just the number of registered users.

With the App period coming to a close we thought we should run a poll.

To be clear applications will be submitted for .brand TLD’s, Generic TLD’s, Geo TLD’s and  IDN’s.

You can vote at the right and for bragging rights you can place your pick in the comment and if you really want to get fancy you can pick what percentage of application will be brands Vs. the other types.

Towards the end of the poll, I will make my prediction.

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Philip Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association just addressed the ICANN board in the open public session and asked about ICANN selecting a provider for the Trademark Clearing House and the URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension).

As you will see below from the transcript ICANN said at the previous ICANN meeting in Dakar in October that a provider for the URS would be selected within a month and of course now it is March and one still hasn’t been selected.

It then took three people to answer the question, after the Chair and the CEO of ICANN punted one of the executive team attempted an answer and seemed to get his letters mixed up, between UDRP and the URS.

Here you go:

“Good afternoon.”

“Speaking on behalf of the internet commerce association representing domain investors and developers, I would like to address the  one of the two new rights protections for new tlds.

One of course is the trademark clearinghouse and the implementation advisory groups,”

The other new rights protection, the URS , the Uniform Rapid Suspension nothing has yet been done on that.”

“At the (ICANN) Dakar meeting, I asked icann staff when we could expect to see implementation begin for URS.

“I was told in about a month.”

“Five months later, I asked the question again and was told that an RFP (for a provider to run the URS)  will be put out in about a month.”

This is disturbing.”

We think it’s problematic that the Board has suggested that a credible URS can be done at a very low price point.

The only analogous procedure available right now is the RAS available at for .XXX (domains) and that’s administered by National Arbitration Forum and they charge exactly the same as what they charge for a UDRP, $1300, not $300 to $500.

The main difference is in the rapidity of the response.

Finally, in regard to the open comment on defensive registrations, the ICA did not comment on that because the notice was quite clear that the questions were being asked about the top level but many interests responded with suggestions to change the URS, which is the second-level remedy, and again, bringing up suggestions have been rejected by the board before to turn the URS into a cut-rate UDRP, particularly with lowering the burden of proof and providing a transfer option.”

“We would suggest that the time has come to begin implementing URS and not again reopening it and reigniting a divisive debate about what’s in it.”

“We recognize that trademark interests need a credible process for protecting the legitimate interests, but registrants need a credible process as well that protects their due process rights, and this is critically important to the success of new TLD’s.”

“That success ultimately is going to be based on registrants adopting them, and if registrants think their rights are not adequately protected, that will discourage registrations.…

According to the BBC, .Uk just hit the 10 million domain mark.

The 10th million domain name is  swarvemagazine.co.uk which was registered by Steven Northam for a photography-based publication.

Nominet who operates the .Uk registry, “described the news as a “mega-milestone”.

“It took charge of the top-level domain name in 1996 when there were 26,000 .uk sites.”

Nominet’s chief executive, Lesley Cowley, is quoted in the article saying that the .uk registrations are growing at 10% for the past couple of years,” with a renewal rate of around 70%

.uk is the world’s second-most popular country code.

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