To whom it may concern: I am a reasonably intelligent adult, having retired after a 40 year career in software and Web programming. I have worked in companies large and small, including owning my own consulting company. I have attempted to read "THIRD AMENDMENT TO THE .COM REGISTRY AGREEMENT" and find that it uses legal language to such a degree that it is difficult to understand its full effects. However, one thing is clear: it further moves ICANN into alignment with the for-profit objectives of VeriSign, Inc., a Delaware-based corporation well-known for its high prices and poor service. The management of domain names is, in essence, a simple process based on the Domain Name System, which uses a mixture of a few dedicated computers and a very large number of shared, private, and public computers to maintain a simple distributed database of Authoritative Zone records and DNS caches that define the association between IP addresses and human-readable domain names. This basic, low-cost system was extended to become a large system of Domain Name Registries who participate to further increase the cost of maintaining Zone records with very little added functionality beyond what could have been provided directly by ICANN through a public and secure automated interface. In addition, ICANN does nothing to prevent large blocks of IP addresses to be allocated to countries and individuals having criminal or malicious intent. I wish to raise my voice in protest to this Agreement, which appears to allow (and perhaps mandate) price increases of 7% per year for the next 8 years. Instead of prices increasing, they should drop dramatically, and management of the Domain Name System should be transferred to a public agency or other truly nonprofit and economically disinterested organization. Prices should be calculated based on the actual costs to maintain the TLD computers, their Internet connections, and the actual cost of an automated public interface and a small trained human staff for most activities associated with maintaining domain names. Regardless of whether reasonable proposals for reducing the price of domain name management, making the current insecure Domain Name System secure, and eliminating the wasteful Domain Name Registries are adopted, this THIRD AMENDMENT TO THE .COM REGISTRY AGREEMENT should be canceled in its entirety, thus protecting the Web from the self-interested greed and collusion of financial interest of both ICANN and VeriSign, Inc. If this Amendment does go into effect, opposing the interest of all Internet stakeholders including the general public, I hope that legal action will be taken against it. I would contribute what I can afford to such legal prosecution. /s/ David Spector 56 Yale St. Portland, ME 04103-3526 icann@springtimesoftware.com