ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains • Hacker News Board

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#71

Post by lunchables » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #53

will_brown wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of State/Division of Corporations. What do you mean by this? Generally if a corporate name is registered (example: ABC, INC.) most states will not allow another “ABC” to be registered (even if ending in another suffix like “Corp” or even if another type of entity like an LLC). I had a client in a certain state who registered their entity name as MSG…

I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing. I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry.

>I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing.

How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it. And the "price barrier" for domain names was less than filing incorporation paperwork, in my state anyway.

>I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry.

At least with domain names you can negotiate with someone. If someone else registers a company name before you, good luck. Same situation, look up the registered members and try to talk them into giving it to you, I guess?

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#72

Post by londons_explore » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

vectorEQ wrote: post #13

"The good news is that Public Interest Registry’s management is competent and well-guided. They will likely wait a while before making any major changes to avoid comments of “we told you so”." Well that's nice of them, so we get to pay crazy amounts in the near future instead of instantly. how generous.

Bets on how long? I reckon 6 months. And they'll use some excuse like "to prevent spam" or "infrastructure costs are going up" (despite them earning millions per year and having practically no expenses)

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#73

Post by londons_explore » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #69

tzs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network Solutions also offers 20 year and 100 year terms. ICANN rules say 10 years is the max, so I'm not sure how this works. Does NS just deal with it 10 years at a time at the underlying registry, eating any price increases themselves? 20 years .org at NS is $13.99/year, which is close to the more reasonable registries, such as Namecheap. 100 years gets it to $9.99/year, which is pretty good--if you believe that N…

That's a brilliant business model. They get all the money up front, get to invest how they want, and if there is a price increase, it probably will be less than inflation, and almost certainly less than their investment returns on your upfront payment.

Potentially unlimited losses if the price goes up to $99999 per year...

Although in that case, I bet they'd just give an excuse and offer a refund of the originally paid amount.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#74

Post by jedberg » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #73

jedberg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a brilliant business model. They get all the money up front, get to invest how they want, and if there is a price increase, it probably will be less than inflation, and almost certainly less than their investment returns on your upfront payment.

Potentially unlimited losses if the price goes up to $99999 per year... Although in that case, I bet they'd just give an excuse and offer a refund of the originally paid amount.

Keep in mind though that the price of the domains has to still be feasible for other people to register, so it would never go that high.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#75

Post by eridius » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

lunchables wrote: post #71

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing. I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry.

>I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing. How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it. And the "price barrier" for domain names was less than filing incorporation paperwork, in my state anyway. >I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry. At least with domain names you…

> How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it.

Because in the absence of price caps the registrar can choose to increase the price on "valuable" domain names (for whatever arbitrary criteria it decides means a domain is "valuable").

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#76

Post by gist » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #75

lunchables wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing. How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it. And the "price barrier" for domain names was less than filing incorporation paperwork, in my state anyway. >I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry. At least with domain names you…

> How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it. Because in the absence of price caps the registrar can choose to increase the price on "valuable" domain names (for whatever arbitrary criteria it decides means a domain is "valuable").

All .org and .info domains will be priced the same. Not more valuable ones can be at a higher cost.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#77

Post by gist » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #43

I'm slowly starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake. Partially because phishing domains is already kind of easy (the rapid increase in tlds isn't helping ), partially because the race to grab and hold names has been having increasing negative effects, and partially because (aside from domains) many actual URLs are already impossible to remember. We're running into the same p…

> I'm slowly starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake.

Not sure given how successful busineses have been with their web identities how you can say that.

> There would be some awful challenges if we got rid of the human-readable part of domains but the benefits of moving to something like a unique hash or key instead

I don't get the point of making a statement like that. It's like saying 'get rid of cars and the benefits will be'.

You know it's a complete non starter because given how things are it can't happen in the short future. We can't even get rid of spam phone calls for god sake. That is almost simple by comparison to 'eliminating human readable parts of domains'

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#78

Post by horsawlarway » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #44

toast0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one where an individual can request and have a domain for life Annual payment is proof that you're still alive. AlterNIC tried settint up alternate tlds years ago, and is now gone. The problems are an alternate root is very unlikely to get consensus, and name resolution without consensus isn't very useful; and you're not going to be able to have friendly names without an arbiter to decide who gets pmlnr.example.

> Annual payment is proof that you're still alive. I don't want my domains sold after I die, and I don't want my bookmarks to stop working after someone else dies. The only parts of a website that I want tied to someone's lifespan is: - whether or not the site is updated, and - how the site is hosted If I could snap my fingers and magically figure out a way to make the site's hosting outlive the person, I'd do that a…

Your vision sounds pretty terrible. At a very cursory glance it seems fine - I don't want my information web to degrade.

Once you dig even a little bit into this, though... you get a quagmire of old and useless information. Outdated sites never go away. They just become a constant burden on the whole system. Information that's been refuted and invalidated years back is still alive and kicking because a domain exists and can be indexed, and there's no chance to ever update it, since the owner is long since dead.

The longer this lasts, the more and more noise to information you get. It's like having an incredible information web and then giving it dementia.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#79

Post by tzs » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #69

tzs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network Solutions also offers 20 year and 100 year terms. ICANN rules say 10 years is the max, so I'm not sure how this works. Does NS just deal with it 10 years at a time at the underlying registry, eating any price increases themselves? 20 years .org at NS is $13.99/year, which is close to the more reasonable registries, such as Namecheap. 100 years gets it to $9.99/year, which is pretty good--if you believe that N…

That's a brilliant business model. They get all the money up front, get to invest how they want, and if there is a price increase, it probably will be less than inflation, and almost certainly less than their investment returns on your upfront payment.

It occurs to me that another possibility is that the 10 year limit does not apply to Network Solutions. Network Solutions was a registrar for something close to a decade before ICANN was created. It's possible that there is some sort of grandfathering that lets them operate under pre-ICANN rules.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#80

Post by belorn » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #3

The whole domain market experience is utter crap. Commoditizing domain names has created such an unbalanced power dynamic between buyers and sellers where the sellers hold all the power. Gatekeeping at it's finest. Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of State/Division of Corporations. I shouldn't have to name my company some contorted bastardization to successfully enter the market.

Registering a trademark is generally more expensive than a domain name, and trademarks don't compete on the same namespace and is split depending on industry. The biggest difference to the domain market is that with domain names everyone is clogging the same namespace. If people just spread out based on nationality and industry it would be easy and cheap.

To make a direct example, if I talked about Abba here in Sweden, most people think about the music band. But if I talk about Abba in the context of food, people will instead think of Abba seafood that make Kalles Kaviar and pickled herring. Abba.se as a domain is thus very ambiguous as it doesn't specify if it about food or music, and abba.com is likely to surprise people as it has nothing to do with either.

To make matter worse, companies that want to protect their trademark or work actively at preventing fake shops will often buy several hundred versions of their domain names under different name spaces. It is seen as best practice, especially for online shops.