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news .org price caps: ICANN chair denies “secret” meetings

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ICANN chair Maarten Botterman has denied that the board of directors approved the removal of price caps in .org, .biz and .info in “secret” meetings in 2019...
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Instead, the Board was briefed by ICANN staff regarding contract renewals that were well within their delegated authority to negotiate and execute.
Isn't the board's job to oversee the use of that delegated authority? The role of the board is, or should be, to solicit outside input to ensure ICANN executives aren't making deals that are bad for the industry. The whole point of having a board is to prevent executive level corruption and mismanagement.

One of the arguments I see, and agree with, when it comes to blockchain domains is that a lack of stability, guarantees, and trust are huge deterrent for the average person or business owner. My interest in domains is only for building things, not reselling, and I view blockchain domains as mostly being a grift with no oversight or recourse for small IP owners. It's sad to see ICANN working tirelessly to reduce the oversight that keeps them relevant.

I want long term guarantees when it comes to my rights, responsibilities, costs, etc. as a domain registrant. Watching ICANN and the registries working in a manner that seems to be ICANN + Registries vs Registrars + Registrants is saddening. It feels like they're working to guarantee huge profits for registries rather than for the long term health of the system.

I'm a naysayer when it comes to blockchain domains, but I also own some for my favorite domain that I want to use. Even as a non-believer, I think it would be foolish to ignore the fact there's a tipping point where the risks of unregulated blockchain domains could become more appealing than the risks created by having ICANN working alongside the registries in a way that detriments registrants and registrars to the benefit of registries that are owned by private equity investors.

The excuse about reducing workload on ICANN staff by having a standard registry agreement doesn't convince me either. In my opinion it's less about having a standardized agreement and more about reducing registry obligations which, in turn, reduces ICANNs enforcement obligations. It's easy to enforce the rules if you eliminate all of them, right?

It's not like the registries aren't making any money either. EBERO fees are something like $0.50 per domain per year, aren't they? If the core operations of a registry cost less than $1 per year for a domain, charging about $8+ per year is creating even more incentive for fragmentation via alternate DNS. I know it's been tried before, but back when things like new.net existed there was no reason to adopt an alternate system. The combination of failing oversight and massive profits increase the legitimacy of, and desire to create, an alternate system.

Instead of treating registrars and registrants like adversaries, ICANN and the registries should be taking a page out of Steve Job's book and asking themselves what kind of DNS registrants want to buy into, not what kind of DNS they think they can foist on everyone while maximizing profits for registry owners.

If ICANN doesn't do it, large registry owners like Donuts should be stepping up to voluntarily provide uniform pricing, guaranteed maximum YoY prices increases, fair dispute arbitration, etc.. Instead they're playing games with premium, often fluctuating pricing and catering to massive IP owners via private agreements. In my opinion they view registrants as an adversary rather than partners that can help grow the industry as a whole.

The value of having a pseudo-anonymous, globally unique namespace is enormous. It's frustrating to watch a bunch of greedy, profit driven hacks devalue it to the point where it's susceptible to fragmentation. The .org shenanigans alone in the last few years delegitimized ICANN enough to open the door for fragmentation and that should be seen as a massive failure on the part of ICANN management and the ICANN board.
 
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