The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) is profoundly disturbed by ICANN’s decision to remove price caps on .org domain names despite the groundswell of opposition from stakeholders.
On June 30, 2019, ICANN advised that it had executed a renewal agreement with Public Interest Registry and the renewal agreement. This was despite a nearly unprecedented public outcry from stakeholders and from .org registrants in particular, where over 3200 public comments were submitted to ICANN. The outcry came from registrants, nonprofits, community leaders, academics, charities, religious groups, community organizations, and many others. Apparently the ICANN Board allowed ICANN Staff to proceed to execute the renewal agreement without any concern over registrant interests, despite the ICA bringing this issue directly to its attention. The decision to ignore ICANN stakeholders in apparent total disregard for its self-professed “bottom-up multi-stakeholder model” is of great concern and calls into question ICANN’s ability to govern the domain name system in the public interest.