DN Media Corporation

Veteran domainer George Kirikos noticed some potentially disturbing language in ICANN’s draft of new Generic Top-level Domains (gTLD) contracts.  In his post on CircleID, he notes section 7.3:

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

He also highlights Section 3.2.b) of the .com registry agreement:

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.

Essentially the concern is that if new gTLDs do not have a price cap, Verisign and other operators of existing Generic Top-level Domains will be able to get their contracts amended to get the same treatment.  This would open up the door to variable pricing, whereby registrants of popular and/or high-earning domains would have to pay more for the same service, simply because they can afford it.

Everyone who owns a domain should express their concerns no later than December 8th by sending an email to gtld-transition@icann.org.

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