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To Whom It May Concern,<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">"ICANN org is not a price regulator and will
defer to the expertise of relevant competition authorities."<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
If you have been limiting wholesale registrar's prices and are now
allowing higher prices, then you are, by definition, a price
regulator or price fixer.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
"to support ICANN’s initiatives to preserve and enhance the
security, stability and resiliency of the DNS"<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Was that already part of your mission or is that mission creep
beyond basic name assignment? In either case, you should clarify
what exactly requires more money and how it will be spent, if you
want public support.<br>
<br>
It wouldn't be bad for ICANN to stop regulating prices if the result
would be a properly competitive free market that naturally seeks
lower prices for independent services, but the market is basically a
monopoly at your level and Verisign is paying you to let them raise
prices on other people.<br>
<br>
As an aside, I have a friend whose self-named domain:
stephaniewohar.com was hijacked or drop caught by Chengdu west.cn
for unrelated spam purposes, and it would have cost her upper
hundreds or thousands of dollars to recover, so I'm not particularly
impressed with the cost effectiveness or current structure of your
monopoly.<br>
<br>
Kevin Edwards<br>
<br>
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