The organization responsible for the administration of domain names Icann considers to lift the previous price barriers. It will start with the TLD .org. The public comments are so far almost exclusively negative.

The domain name administration organization, Icann, is currently negotiating the contract with the operator of the TLD .org. The new agreement envisages removing the existing restrictions on price increases for end customers, which has led to a large number of negative comments. The TLD is considered one of the most well-known and widely used of all, apart from the well-known country TLDs. Operated by the non-profit Public Interest Registry, .org is targeted at nonprofit organizations and is used by many open source projects.

The registries have a kind of natural monopoly, since only they can ultimately give domain names for their respective TLD. Through so-called registrars acting as a kind of intermediary or reseller, the domains are eventually sold to customers for a mostly annual fee. The price increase when renewing the domains is limited to a maximum of 10 percent.

This restriction is to be repealed in the new contract. Similar contracts are currently being negotiated for the TLDs .info or .biz. The Registrar Namecheap points out that the new terms and conditions should bring an adaptation to other contracts that already apply to the so-called gTLDs. There is no limit to the prices.

For the contracts, there is a public comment phase, which is scheduled to end tomorrow, Monday 29th April. So far the comments are mostly negative. Whether and to what extent Icann will react to this remains to be seen. However, hurry is required, after all, the existing contract expires on June 30 this year.