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

[Keith Keffer]

Hi,

The url that we associate with our online presence, whether it is a 
personal website or a business website, represents a significant 
investment of time and money to develop brand recognition.  In many ways 
it is like a phone number on steroids.

While we expect there to be costs increases over time as services 
change, these changes should be controlled and modest, justified by an 
increase in expenses incurred by the service provider.

The proposed changes to allow Verisign to increase the wholesale price 
to registrars for .COM domains by 7% each year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 
2023, does not seem to be supported by an increase in expenses, but by a 
desire for a corporation to take advantage of the fact that many people 
and business are locked into a specific domain name as it represent 
their online identity.  The fact that ICANN will receive an additional 
$20 million as a result of this deal which was done in secret does not 
help the situation.  All appearances are both groups plan to take 
advantage of the users in their market.

It's not as if we have an alternate vendor we can go to.

I hope that you reconsider the changes that you are making until such 
time as full justification and transparency can be provided to support 
the need for such a change.

Thank you,

Keith Keffer