Summary
After lengthy internal litigation, ICANN's "Independent Review Process" recommended in favor of restoring price controls for .biz, .org, and .info in the final 171-page declaration for Namecheap, Inc., versus ICANN Independent Review Process. Formerly, the organization capped fees a registry operator may charge to a domain registrar, such as Namecheap, for each .biz, .org and .info domain registration.
For clarity, a registry operator is the company who owns the database for a particular TLD, a domain registrar is the company that actually sells individual domains; some operators also run a registrar for their own TLD. Despite the decision, the IRP does not have authority to reverse or annul the removal.
Quotes
My thoughts
I never thought that Internet Infrastructure news would both slide into my awareness, and keep me captivated enough to understand (barely) what exactly this means. It's a little offbeat, but it just feels sort of important for the future of the internet. I got to learn a bit more about the inner workings of ICANN, too. I think this might lead to more affordable domains in the future, especially if the public support for price caps grow. However, I feel its also totally possible that this doesn't change, or domain registrars use it for a larger profit with markups. It's good to keep up with niche news like this, especially since DNS is an essential part of the internet. My thoughts should be taken with a grain of salt, I'm not a professonal by any means, i'm just a sleep deprived nerd.
Overall, I am very happy to see that ICANN wants to strive for transparency, especially since it maintains core internet infrastructure that literally billions use daily; but I am also sort of worried that its own dispute arbitration system does not have the power to judicially review the Bylaws, it makes the process seem a bit toothless. I'd need to do a bit of research on why they changed this back in 2002 to really understand why.
(I hope I'm doing this right!! First time actually submitting an article here)
Sources
https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-receives-final-declaration-in-the-namecheap-independent-review-process-05-01-2023-en
https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/irp-namecheap-icann-final-declaration-redacted-23dec22-en.pdf