[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] Voting against .com price increase

[Nick Brown]

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have learned via online research that ICANN intends to increase by
over 70% the price of the .com TLD. I am writing this email to
formerly object to this intention.

The price of TLDs is already very high compared to the relative data
storage cost for the period of 1 Year.

Choosing to nearly double the cost of such TLDs simply because
Verisign have essentially offered your organisation a $20 million
dollar bribe is irresponsible.

There is already a vast trend of domain name squatting, where vendors
will automatically scoop up domains simply for the potential to resell
them in the future. This behaviour has, and continues to, bias domain
ownership in favour of the rich, and prevent fledgling businesses or
other potential domain owners from having equal accessibility to the
domain namespace.

As a software engineer and web domain owner, I understand how
automated the process of domain name registration & ownership is.
While human-occupied jobs do exist within this realm, such as those
working for top-level DNS providers and security firewalls for
top-level DDOS protection and the like, the majority of the process of
registering and managing domain names is performed and maintained by
software agents. Therefore I do not see justification in such a hefty
and spontaneous price hike, especially when money exchanging hands
between your organisation and Verisign is involved.

Please do not follow the monopolistic behaviour of companies like
AT&T, Comcast or Verizon. The reason inequality is rife in America is
due to rich-favouring tactics like these companies demonstrate. To
follow suit by accepting the Verisign bribe simply to hike prices for
the end consumer would be disastrous for the future of equality of
domain accessibility.

Please instead focus on setting a healthier and kinder example of
encouraging equality, by redirecting your efforts to instead
deconstruct and prevent domain squatting, or automated & exhaustive
automated domain purchasing.

This would help ensure that TLDs remain available and accessible to
every person with such interest, rather than exclusively favouring the
wealthy and supporting their ongoing land-grab in this arena.

Yours sincerely,

Nicholas Brown