You people are looking to make the Internet another rich only and deep pockets organization only playground. The Internet itself was created by the US government for the People and for research and development, and while commerce has bloomed, this should not be now just for the sole exploitation by private companies to gouge and make more money off our backs. "Verisign will be allowed to increase the wholesale price to registrars for .COM domains by 7% each year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. After a two year “freeze”, Verisign can increase prices by 7% annually during 2026-2029, then another two year “freeze”. This cycle will continue, meaning that within 10 years, .COM domains could cost approximately 70% more than the current wholesale price of $7.85 " This is crazy, heavy handed, greedy, totally uncalled for, and UNACCEPTABLE! "ICANN also had rules that the operator of a TLD could not operate a domain name registrar. Although in 2012 ICANN allowed operators of new gTLDs to have domain name registrars, it did not apply to Verisign. The new contract will allow Verisign to operate its own registrar, except for selling .COM domain names itself. To circumvent this, it is also possible that Verisign could act as a reseller of .COM domains, through another registrar. This result is that the company that controls almost 80% of the registrar pricing for domain names will compete directly with all domain registrars, maximizing its control of domain name pricing to the detriment of other competing registrars. While this might result in lower prices to consumers, fewer registrars will harm competition, choice, and domain name services. " Can you say MONOPOLY??? We'll be forced to call on politicians to get involved, and they'll LOVE the opportunity. You won't be able to hide behind the Trump Administration forever. "As detailed on Standing Up to ICANN to Keep Domain Prices in Check and pricecaps.org, over 3,500 comments were submitted in support of price controls for the .ORG, .INFO, and .BIZ TLDs. Only six comments supported removing price controls. ICANN discounted the comments that were in favor of maintaining price caps. A number of the comments were submitted using an online tool, which caused the comments to be discounted as “spam” by the ICANN Ombudsman. ICANN removed the price caps, primarily relying upon a biased preliminary analysis from 2009 by an economics professor that did not reference any data. " HOW DARE YOU IGNORE NEGATIVE COMMENTS!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!! Stop it. Just stop it NOW! If this happens you'll face grass roots and political involvement so deep that your collective heads will spin.Don't believe it? Okay. You'll have to find out the hard way, unless you come to your senses and stop gouging or looking to create a virtual monopoly on the Internet domain name space. Tom Connelly ====