[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] New Verisign contract: public comment

[luxagen]

Hi there,

There seems to be both a distinct lack of accountability and a worrying conflict of interest in the new Verisign contract that encourages profiteering in .com domains over the next ten years at the expense of domain leasees without any real justification in terms of real costs.

The conflict of interest comes in the form of Verisign's significant payment to ICANN; the lack of accountability is in what this money will be used for and how other stakeholders (i.e. leasees) will be protected from negative consequences. This all comes across as extremely shady and likely bad for accessibility of Internet resources over the next decade.

ICANN has a responsibility to all Internet users to make reasonable decisions in the management of the critical shared resources it controls. If the current situation results in needless expense of .com domains, I predict that the central role the .com TLD has enjoyed to date will fade away, and this can only hurt ICANN and other players in the long run.

Please come up with a better solution that builds in some kind of protection to convince everyone that the tail isn't wagging the dog here. Special interests inevitably play a large part in the management of our shared Internet infrastructure, but that infrastructure should not be used as a cudgel to exploit Internet users with.

best regards,
Luxagen