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New gTLD registries want a $17 million ICANN rebate

Kevin Murphy, March 24, 2017, Domain Registries

Many gTLDs are performing more poorly than expected and their registries want some money back from ICANN to compensate.
The Registries Stakeholder Group this week asked ICANN for a 75% credit on their quarterly fees, which they estimate would cost $16.875 million per year.
The money would come from leftover new gTLD application fee money, currently stashed in an ICANN war chest valued at nearly $100 million.
The RySG, in a letter to ICANN (pdf), also asked for $3 million from the fund to be used to pay for advertising the availability of new gTLDs.
“These measures combined would support ICANN’s mission to promote competition for the public interest and operational interoperability of the internet,” the proposal states.
Currently, all gTLDs on the 2012-round contract have to pay ICANN $25,000 per year, split into quarterly payments, in fixed fees.
Transaction volume over 50,000 transactions per year is taxed at $0.25 per add, renewal or transfer.
The RySG wants the $6,250 quarterly fee reduced by $4,687.50 for a year, with the possibility of the discount being renewed in subsequent years.
In its letter, it cites an example of 900 delegated gTLDs being affected, which would cost $16.875 million per year.
However, that’s only three quarters of the total number of new gTLDs in the root. That currently stands at over 1,200 string, so the actual cost would presumably be closer to £23 million.
Because the new gTLD program, with its $185,000 application fees, was never meant to turn a profit, the RySG thinks it’s fair that the excess money comes back to the companies that originally paid it.
The rationale for the discount is that many new gTLDs (not all, as the RySG is quick to point out) are struggling under poor sales volumes, meaning a 5,000-name TLD, of which there are many, is in effect costing the registry $5 per name per year in fixed ICANN fees.
But that rationale does not of course apply to all new gTLDs. There are currently almost 470 dot-brand gTLDs in the root, which have business models oriented on harder-to-quantify ROI rather than sales volumes and profits.
It’s not clear from the RySG letter whether the discount would apply to all gTLDs or only those with a straightforward old-school profit motive.

.xxx has its ICANN fees slashed and adopts URS

Kevin Murphy, February 8, 2017, Domain Registries

ICM Registry is to see its .xxx ICANN registry fees hugely reduced in contractual amendments approved by ICANN last week.
The changes also mean that .xxx will now become subject to the Uniform Rapid Suspension anti-cybersquatting mechanism, despite it being a pre-2012 gTLD.
.xxx becomes the latest pre-2012 gTLD to move to a contract more closely aligned with the standard Registry Agreement from the new gTLD program.
Under the complex new deal, its per-transaction fee could be reduced from $2 to $0.25 by mid-2018.
Its quarterly fixed fee will go up from $2,500 to $6,250.
ICM has also agreed to take on many aspects of the standard new gTLD Registry Agreement, the most controversial of which is the URS.
The domainer group the Internet Commerce Association was fiercely critical of this addition to the contract, as it has been when URS was brought to .jobs, .travel, .cat, .pro and .mobi.
ICA is largely concerned that URS will also be pushed upon Verisign’s .net, which is up for contract renewal this year, and eventually .com.

.xxx to get lower ICANN fees, accept the URS

Kevin Murphy, October 14, 2016, Domain Registries

ICM Registry has negotiated lower ICANN transaction fees as part of a broad amendment to its Registry Agreement that also includes new trademark protection measures.
The company’s uniquely high $2 per-transaction fee could be reduced to the industry standard $0.25 by mid-2018.
As part of the renegotiated contract, ICM has also agreed to impose the Uniform Rapid Suspension policy on its registrants.
URS is the faster, cheaper version of UDRP that allows trademark owners to have domain names suspended in more clear-cut cases of cybersquatting.
The $2 fee was demanded by ICANN when ICM first signed its RA in 2011.
At the time, ICANN said the higher fee, which had doubled from a 2010 draft of the contract, was to “account for anticipated risks and compliance activities”.
The organization seemed to have bought into the fears that .xxx would lead to widespread misuse — something that has noticeably failed to materialize — and was expecting higher legal costs as a result.
The companion TLDs .adult, .porn and .sex, all also managed by ICM, only pay $0.25 per transaction.
The overall effects on registrants, ICANN and ICM will likely be relatively trivial.
With .xxx holding at roughly 170,000 domains and a minimal amount of inter-registrar transfer activity, ICM seems to be paying ICANN under $400,000 a year in transaction fees at the moment.
Its registry fee is usually $62, though a substantial number of domains have been sold at lower promotional pricing, so the cost to registrants is not likely to change a great deal.
The reduction to $0.25 would have to be carried out in stages, with the earliest coming this quarter, and be reliant on ICM keeping a clean sheet with regards contract compliance.
Under the deal, ICM has agreed to adopt many of the provisions of the standard Registry Agreement for 2012-round gTLDs.
One of those is the URS, which may cause consternation among domainers fearful that the rights protection mechanism may one day also find its way into the .com registry contract.
ICM has also agreed to implement its existing policies on, for example, child abuse material prevention, into the contract as Public Interest Commitments.
The RA amendment is currently open for public comment at ICANN.