The amount of that registry fee is grounded nothing more than the assertion - an assertion made without supporting evidence - that Verisign needs that 7% registration fee every year in order to cover costs. (Similar gifts are made to the other registries.)
I believe that if you review the history, you'll find that's the amount that was adequate to make some lawsuits go away. The price is clearly way above cost. Verisign runs the .COM and .NET registries together, the costs must be the same, yet it charges $2 less for .NET registrations, and I doubt they're losing money on them. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly