Domain Names costlier! .org hiked by 10%

Public Interest Registry, the registry for .org domain names, has notified ICANN that it is increasing the wholesale prices for .org domain names by 10%. The annual wholesale price for .org domain name registrations will be $6.75, slightly below the $6.86 rate that .com domains are expected to be available at later this year. As the profit margins are thin on domain registrations, the price hike will pinch not your favorite domain registrar’s pocket but yours!

Public Interest Registry has given no rational for the price increase to ICANN. As far as I can make out, it has the most obvious business interest in its mind – profits!

One can’t really blame Public Interest Registry for thinking about ways to increase its profits. After all, it has monopolistic control over the .org domain names! In fact, when .biz registry NeuStar raised prices last year, it was belligerent enough to state the reason for the price hike as – everyone else was doing it. What bullshit!

Also, there are talks that Afilias is all set to hike prices of .info and that NeuStar is already planning another hike in .biz prices.

I have always believed that this whole system of ICANN and domain name registries is rotten to the core. They all have a cartel of sorts. Why does the government allow such monopolistic market conditions to emerge? I wish some intelligent guy in the US will hire good lawyers and file a lawsuit against all this!

Why am I mad? Well, the simple reason is that I have loads of domains that I need to get renewed every year and even now it is quite a lot of money I have to spend. With the price increase it will be a whole lot of new burden.

Yes, yes… I know… you will ask me to monetize the domain to sustain themselves. But bro, monetization doesn’t work on its own. It requires a lot of time, skills and effort, which again costs money. A domainer like me is not a programmer or web designer or an SEO expert. To hire them, I would need to spend money. Domaining is getting costlier by the day. Tsk… Tsk…

if I keep it spending on sustenance, when do I get to enjoy it?

WikiLeaks gets a new lease at life!

At least, better sense and justice prevail!

A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S.  hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade’s site from the internet.

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet.

The judge signed an order last week that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar.

- Wired.com

For those who came in late, WikiLeaks is a true whistle-blower website that published thousands of leaked documents. The web site was ordered to be taken offline in America after a suit was filed against the site posting allegedly stolen documents containing individuals’ banking records. The documents suggested that a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank was helping customers practice money laundering and tax evasion across the globe.

Now, the banks in Switzerland must be getting the jitters as the pressure on them to be more transparent will be increased!