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

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again,

Just as a followup, I find it disturbing that the ICANN staff who
prepared the draft agreements stated that for the existing 2005-2007
gTLD agreements for Section 7.3:

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

"(ICANN?s unsponsored gTLD registry agreements have not included price
controls.)"

This is demonstrably FALSE, see Section 7.3 of the current .biz, .info
and .org agreements:

http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/biz/registry-agmt-08dec06.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/info/registry-agmt-08dec06.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/org/registry-agmt-16jul08.htm

each of which have in place a "Maximum Service Fee" due to the hard
work of many in the ICANN community.

It's very alarming that such misleading information is being put out by
ICANN in regards to the description of existing consumer protections
that exist for registrants. ICANN's registries have managed to create a
"presumptive renewal" for themselves at the expense of the ICANN
community who would fare better if registry operations were tendered to
the lowest bidder. At a minimum, existing domain registrants should
expect presumptive renewal of their own domains at a constant price, or
one that reflects a price index of global technology costs (which is
generally far below that of the Consumer Price Index).

Sincerely,

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