[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement

[Tim Cox]

Dear Sirs

I am the registrant of a number of .com domain names.

I wisth to oppose the proposed price increase to .COM domains.

No one other than Verisign want increases in .COM prices, prices which are
not always well reflected in registration fees.

The current rate of $7.85 is already far more than justified.  This is
simply the "wholesale" cost of registering and doesn't reflect any actual
cost involvement for Verisign or ICANN.

Verisign is merely the manager of the .COM Registry – it has no business
dictating the price.  ICANN is supposed to govern the domain name system in
the public interest.

I am aware that the 7% is a maximum per year for each of the four years
and, theoretically, there could be no increase or a sub 7% increase some
years, however, I have little faith in this being the norm and, most
certainly, CANNOT plan on it being any less than the full 7% in any fiscal
plans made.  Below are the costs based on this calculation.

20 year Cost analysis:
$  7.85 / year 2018
$10.29 / year 2023 (31% increase over 2018)
$13.49 / year 2029 (72% increase over 2018)
$17.68 / year 2035 (125% increase over 2018)
$23.17 / year 2041 (195% increase over 2018)

This is clearly unacceptable and unreflective of the market itself.  If -
and this is a big, unjustified if - there is a need for price increases,
this should be in the form of surcharges on the domains changing hands for
ridiculous amounts; those operating websites which help direct traffic
(such as generalsynod.com or ukbricks.com, both 2 of my .com domains) are
likely otherwise to end up with exorbitant higher costs for no additional
value.

Kind regards

Tim Cox
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20/attachments/20200209/fca6d579/attachment.html>