[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] Internet is a utility vital for many people - keep prices of .com down

[tom at richardhughesauthor.com]

Dear ICANN

I have heard that you have agreed with Verisign that there can be huge
increases in prices for .com domains. I keep quite a few of them, mostly to
protect copyrights (for instance both my late grandfathers, Richard Hughes
and RJ Minney, were authors) but I have also built a small global consulting
business that relies on a .com domain and I spent 2 years trying and
succeeding to recapture the .com name (munkination.com) my son had developed
as a teenager but allowed to lapse, and only now age 27 he is starting to
build it as a global creative brand, inspired by his teenage vision.

Increasing the prices of .com domains would hurt me and my family and my
business and damage our abilities to own our own brands and develop our
lives and businesses, which is the requirement in the age where there are so
many fewer formal sector jobs available. The price increase will be
disproportionately and particularly badly felt in developing currencies
where USD is already a big problem and the Internet is providing a great
tool towards equality and self-advancement for millions of entrepreneurs.

I urge you to peg price increases to a maximum that is in line with global
inflation - treat the Internet like a utility such as water that we all need
to survive. 

I am also alarmed by the accountability of the alleged payment to ICANN and
wonder what precedent that sets as we saw ICANN as the non-profit guardian
of the netizens - that kind of development money can easily be raised
elsewhere without affecting so many million people.

Tom

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20/attachments/20200211/60e8b5f0/attachment.html>