[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] Stop the .com price increase now!

[Konstantinos Zournas]

I am a .com registrant and I strongly oppose the proposed price  
increases in .com domain names. I also represent all my clients here  
in Greece that are also owners of .com domain names.


I am writing this comment with full knowledge that I will be ignored  
by ICANN. This comment period parody that ICANN has built only  
legitimizes their predetermined corrupted decisions. Comments, just  
like with .org where 3,200 comments were ignored, will once again be  
ignored. Verisign will get permission to print money through the .com  
price increases while ICANN gets some spare change from Verisign as a  
gift for their "services".

Billions of dollars will flow from the global economy to the pockets  
of Verisign employees and shareholders without any real economy  
justification.

The cost of maintaining the .com registry is going down while Verisign  
remains the domain name monopoly that it is.

Verisign is running the .com registry at a cost of below $3 per domain  
name while charging $7.85. Apparently that is not enough for ICANN. $3  
is already an inflated price. If the .com registry contract was put up  
for a public bid, as it should, then the cost would drop $2 and could  
even approach $1 per domain name.

How does ICANN justifies a 30% price increase over 4 years on domain  
names that cost so little to maintain and operate? Oh wait. ICANN said  
that their are not price regulators. But yes they are. They always  
were price regulators of the WHOLESALE pricing. They are not  
regulators of the RETAIL pricing. ICANN was always setting a maximum  
wholesale price on all legacy TLDs like .com, .net, .org, .info and  
.biz. Only 2 months ago did it change its tune and started saying they  
are not price regulators. ICANN is a price regulator of legacy domain  
names just like every country in the world regulates the pricing of  
its own ccTLD.

Of course the 30% price increase is just the beginning. .Com domain  
names will keep increasing year after year, squeezing money from  
unprotected registrants all over the world. Verisign's monopoly  
violates people's rights all over the world. I hope governments from  
countries all over the world get involved to stop this theft.

ICANN is now working for their registry friends instead of doing their  
job that is protecting the public from unjustified price increases.  
ICANN people are just doing anything so as not to lose their bonuses  
and to secure their next high paying job at one of the registries they  
help get richer. Biggest example is Fadi Chehade, former Chief  
Executive Officer of ICANN, that is now consulting for Donuts that has  
over 200 new domain extensions and also consulting for the potential  
buyers of .org. ICANN removed the price caps on .org domains despite  
public outrage. Now ICANN is being investigated by the California  
Attorney General.

Verisign is one of the most profitable companies in the world with  
some of the highest profit margins ever observed. People all over the  
world are not working to pay the Verisign tax that ICANN imposes on  
them.

Stop the .com price increase now!
Konstantinos Zournas
OnlineDomain.com
https://onlinedomain.com/2019/04/29/domain-name-news/wake-up-people-icann-and-the-registries-want-to-steal-your-domain-names/