[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] accessibility of .com's is a big deal

[Jaclyn Hawtin]

Dear ICANN,

please consider this:

Today I heard that you are making a deal with Verisign Inc. regarding the
sale of of .com's. And that this deal is going to increase the cost of
.coms over the next year by more than 70%.

We all know that .com's  are the TLD to buy, and that using something else
makes it confusing for users to access and thus for businesses to gain
traction.

If the prices get raised like this basically what is going to happen is a
large segment of people are going to get pushed out of being able to afford
to purchase .com domains. They will be forced to buy other TLD's that don't
perform as well for them.

These people that can't afford are going to be the up and
coming entrepreneurs from places like developing countries of which the
world REALLY needs right now. Few people in the US will be affected. But
this move totally goes against the principles of an *open and accessible
internet*. If it is your intention to keep a level playing field for all
people online then I urge you to repeal this decision.

I help families build business online. Often times it starts with a simple
beautiful idea, maybe it's a family selling seeds online that come from the
farm in Indonesia, or a Mom that makes textiles from her house in Mexico.
They can barely afford to pay for domain and hosting services for the
business. But they're doing it and the businesses are growing. If the costs
go up on the domain side, that would become a barrier into which many would
give up before even getting started because of the financial strain.

Accessibility matters, I hope that you really think through how this price
increase will affect accessibility for all people around the world.

with gratitude,

*Jaclyn Hawtin*
Managing Partner, Digital Dames
jaclyn at digitaldames.io | digitaldames.io


*Empowering entrepreneurs through technology *

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