> there is nothing I can see that incentivises good behavior.

Competition with all the other registries?

For the most cost sensitive domain owners, they typically have a presence on social media and contact with users via email. And, of course, they're usually discovered by search engine rather than domain. So the switching costs are quite low and the demand extremely elastic.

How much would it cost society as a whole if WikiPedia switched away form .org? Think of all the printed links, now defunct. Think of the value of that domain to an occupant with less scruples, once left behind. The confused people who will find themselves on a WikiPedia-esque, ad and scam ridden copy.

And that’s just WikiPedia.

This is a shitshow of historic proportions for the internet as a whole. It will be remembered as a landmark in the ever metastasising cancer of monetisation that is suffocating the World Wide Web from within.

Not all consumers are equal.

Wikipedia sized organizations would easily absorb the relatively trivial cost, so, they wouldn't switch. Their demand is relatively inelastic to price.

The people switching are going to be the far more numerous smaller operations, who are elastic to price.

And, of course, anyone signing up for a new domain is highly elastic.

Because there are lots of people who are highly elastic, the overall demand is highly elastic.

Wikipedia could absorb a trivial cost increase so it's likely that a PE firm would target them with more steep increases. From what I've read about their price increase limiting "agreement" it isn't one, it's just a statement and isn't laid out in any binding contracts.

Maybe Wikipedia gets it's registration price bumped up to 3 million because the PE firm thinks the org can absorb the cost.

Why wouldn’t Wikipedia hedge against this outcome by extending their domain for 10 years tomorrow, and paying $100 to do that?

What happens after the 10 years are up? I very much hope that Wikipedia will be able to stay on the Internet for longer than that.

It can't be laid out in a binding contract because it's a new contract each time you renew the name. This is something every renter has dealt with since forever.

So, yes, they could absolutely start trying to shake down the biggest non-profit organizations. Those are also organizations that are highly sympathetic and have literally hundreds of millions of viewers, and thus immense political clout.

It could be laid out in a binding contract for the purchase of .org that the PE firm is prevented from reoffering a name renewal above the rate they previously offered it and the agreed adjustment - it just appears that isn't actually contractually laid out anywhere and is simply a PR statement.

Contract law certainly isn't something to trivially walk into, but there are ways this could have been done.

A domain only has One registry