[ga] Will VeriSign be able to engage in tiered pricing for .com soon?

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

According to the draft new gTLD contracts for Section 7.3:

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-draft-summary-changes-24oct08-en.pdf
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-comments-en.htm

"Price controls have been removed for 2008 in favor of the transparent
pricing model outlined above."

Section 3.2.b) of the .com registry agreement states:

http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-com-01mar06.htm

"ICANN shall not apply standards, policies, procedures or practices
arbitrarily, unjustifiably, or inequitably and shall not single out
Registry Operator for disparate treatment unless justified by
substantial and reasonable cause."

In my opinion, VeriSign (and other existing gTLD operators) are almost
being invited to ask for their contracts to be amended to get the "same
treatment" as new gTLDs in regards to the elimination of pricing caps.
This once again could re-open the issue of tiered pricing that most
have fought very hard against in order to protect registrants:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/icann_tiered_pricing_tld_biz_info_org_domain/

I believe the language of these proposed new gTLD contracts needs to
have hard caps in place to protect existing gTLD registrants. New gTLDs
are NOT effective substitutes for existing gTLDs, and thus
"competition" isn't going to keep VeriSign's pricing power in check.
Even with a 10-year transition period, it would shock the conscience if
VeriSIgn was permitted to arbitrarily and unilaterally raise the
renewal price of .coms to millions or billions of dollars per year (say
$1 billion/yr for Google.com, $10 million/yr for Hotels.com, $50
million/yr for Cars.com, $30 million/yr for Games.com, or whatever the
market would bear), effectively re-auctioning the entire list of
premium domain names to the highest bidder, removing the existing
registrant and replacing things with .tv style pricing.

Alternatively, all existing gTLD operators need to agree to language,
before any new gTLDs are approved, that make explicit that the hard
caps cannot be removed irregardless of whatever happens in other gTLDs.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/