[governance] Verisign Loses Dot-Com Piggybank

[Kivuva]

Thank you Karl for those insights and for bringing a very important
angle into the debate.

With more than 10,000% profit, is it ethical for verisign to keep
increasing their prices? Are the lobby groups that advocate for
consumer protection toothless in trying to advocate for a reversal of
these trends? Or are the lobby groups influenced and corrupted by big
dip-pocket American dealmakers?

Verisign is assured of Billions of dollars every year for renewal of
existing 115million+ domains. With the increased use of this infinite
resource, should the price be going up or down?

It is time that the USDoC in conjunction with ICANN tendered for new
.com and .net registries with the mandate of protecting consumers
rather than fattening gluttons. But again, this might never see light
of day

On 09/12/2012, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
> On 12/09/2012 11:28 PM, Kivuva wrote:
>
>> It seems the US government is protecting consumes from over
>> commercialization of domains. Verisign gets over 700% profit per
>> domain.
>
> My own calculations tend to show that Verisign's return (based on its
> ICANN-allowed registration fee) over the cost of goods sold is rather
> higher than your estimate - I find it to be more on the order of
> 10,000%, i.e. at least a 100-fold markup.
>
> Your question is a good one and it goes to the heart of the notion of
> accountability - who can hold ICANN (or any other body of internet
> governance) accountable for its acts or its failures to act?
>
> The registry fee that ICANN allows to Verisign is a prime example of a
> non-accountable act on the part of ICANN.  The registry fee was a number
> pulled out of thin air during a settlement of litigation between ICANN
> and Verisign during an era when ICANN was nearly insolvent, had to to be
> bailed out by the RIRs, had no money to sustain an extended legal
> battle.  And ICANN has never even considered subjecting that registry
> fee to an audit or demonstration that the registry fee bears any
> relationship to the actual cost of providing the registry service.
>
> ICANN's new TLD program is a small relief valve, but it is 15 years late
> - and at the rate it is going it will be closer to 18-to-20 years late
> by the time newcomers actually get running.
>
> When we established the Boston Working Group in 1997 our proposal to
> NTIA for what could become ICANN contained sunset provisions that would
> have prohibited the kind of infinite position of grace that ICANN has
> granted unto Verisign.  But that language did not make it into what
> became ICANN.
>
> By-the-way, I am associated with one of the groups that is bidding for
> new top level domains (I'm associated with Uniregistry).  We are really
> trying to find new models and ways to treat people who register domain
> names with more respect for their rights, and their money, than has
> typically been the case in many of the existing top level domains.  And
> we have voluntarily adopted significant constraints on our own ability
> to raise fees and rates.  (It's our hope that rates will go down over
> time, rather than up.)
>
> 	--karl--
>
>
>
>
>


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