Ladies and Gentlemen: The price rises proposed in this amendment are deeply troubling. The internet was, when it was founded, a democratic medium, one where a small business with a great idea could shine as much as a big business could. Look at the companies that rose in that early era, such as Googlecompanies that started with low cost, including securing a dot-com domain name. The internet of the '90s was for the many, not the few, and this great equalizing effect produced innovation. Small- to medium-sized businesses no longer needed massive budgets to reach potential audiences. Part of this democratization is the ability for anyone to afford a domain name, to compete on a level playing field with larger, better financed organizations. Raising costs to a prohibitive level for some will harm innovation: for one, people will not be able to have the legitimacy that a unique domain name would give them. It would affect their efforts to give their creations a unique brand name that will help them market their ideas. It would also give an advantage to better-financed citizens, which to me flies in the face of the raison d'être of the medium. The United States is already being harmed immeasurably by its change in philosophy over monopolies: once considered harmful to innovation, giving rise to your antitrust legislation, they are now being tolerated in certain casesone only needs to look online to see where this has got us. Internet giants dominating the landscape, making it far more difficult for competitors to stand out. And competition, I thought, was helpful to a country that so believes in a market economy. The fact that Google, Facebook and others offer "free stuff" is deceptive: people might not be parting with cash, but they are parting with their identity. My point is that there are already forces that work against individuals and small- to medium-sized enterprises, and ICANN is putting up one more if these substantial price increases go ahead. Raising domain name prices, especially in the dot-com space, therefore, stifles the economy in numerous ways. In my opinion, the negatives outweigh the positives, and I urge you to keep the dot-com TLD accessible to all individuals. Yours very truly, Jack Yan Jack Yan, LL B, BCA (Hons.), MCA CEO, Jack Yan & Associates <http://jya.net> Publisher, Lucire <http://lucire.com> and Autocade <http://autocade.net> Co-chair, Medinge Group <http://medinge.org> ----------