Fadi Chehade, CEO of ICANN, in a story published by the HuffingtonPost.com, which also contains a video interview with Fadi at World Economic Forum in Davos, explaining how we “went from twenty-something” top domain names to hundreds” throws large domain investors under the bus and then backs up the bus and rolls over them again calling them Cybersquatters.
In respond to a questions regarding “land grabs” in the new domain extension Fadi said:
“The reality is, the more there are names (new gTLD’s), less people will actually be hogging names in order to charge a lot for them.
“Because if somebody took your name on dot X, you can go get another name on dot Y now.”
Fadi then went on to say:
“The new extensions will drive a of to all for a lot of new innovation, which will flourish on a new domain system and will reduced cybersquatting.”
On a personal level as someone who owns lets call it 80,000 domain names, I pay ICANN $.18 for every .com and $.25 for every new gTLD registration.
Lets just say I pay ICANN $15,000 a year for the last 10 years or $150,000 for which I get called a Hog.
We all know that there are domain investors with 300,000 domain names 500K and even 1M domain names guess those are super Hogs.
Bottom line ICANN has taken in a tremendous amount of money off the back of us Hogging up domains.
Second if Fadi take a look at the applicants for those that applied to operate new gTLD’s at registries, he will see that some of the largest applicants for new gTLD’s are the same people that hogged up the domains in .Com.
Actually some of those same people are hogging up the new gTLD’s space as well.
Frank Schilling is one of the largest applicants for new gTLD string but made almost of all this money “hogging” up domains and and then “charge a lot for them”. The same money that he used to hand over to ICANN in application fees and to win private auctions for strings there were more than one applicant for.
Mr. Schilling at last report is the largest registrant of new gTLD domain names and has registered over 85,000 of domain names in his own extension for the purpose of “charging a lot for them”
Radix is also a largest domain company which directly and indirect own a lot of domain names and has made plenty selling services like Logic Boxes to the domain name Hogs. Radix is using a premium registration and renewal pricing structure where domain registrations can hit $5K a year ongoing, which seems “like a lot” of money as well
The Donuts group comes from the domain industry and one of the principal owned and operated the domain name registrar, Enom.com which made a lot of money off those domain name “Hogs” and also using a premium registration and renewal pricing structure where domain registrations can hit thousands if not tens of thousand per domain, again what we think would fall into the “a lot of Money” category.
Daniel Negari who operates the new gTLD with the most number of applications closing in on 777,777 registrations has owned a lot of domain names over the year and then charged a lot for them.
For Fadi apparently not being satisfied with just calling out those who have registered a number of domain names ‘hogging” them he then drops the “C” bomb calling domain investors, cybersquatters.
Fadi them goes on to predict that all of these new extensions will reduce the amount of Cybersquatting, ignoring the facts and numbers which as we have pointed out number administrate hearings (UDRP/URS) involving new gTLD are 15X more than incumbent extensions like .Com, .Net and .Org to name a few.
Finally Fadi fails to note or point out that many new gTLD registries are using annual renewal premium pricing, meaning that if someone “took your name on dot X, you can go get another name on dot Y now” without having to pay the hogs “a lot of money” but might have to pay up to $60,000 a year for a dot X or dot Y domain extension.
There isn’t much of a difference between someone who was hogging up domain name in .com’s to “charge a lot for them” to registries who are charging up to $60,000 a year for a domain name registration and renewal fee.
All and all some pretty ignorant statements in our opinion made by the CEO of ICANN and an insult to those domain investors that are some of the biggest buyer’s of new gTLD’s domain names who have paid ICANN a small fortune over the years allowing them to travel the world, pay millions a year in salary and other benefits.
Its an old expression but still a very valuable one to live your life based on
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
