I’m extremely concerned by the proposed changes to the Proposed Amendment 3 to the .com registry agreement. In particular, the significantly increased registration and renewal fees. I am a solo business owner, but competition in a busy market. I don’t compete with the huge brands for attention, but my online presence is extremely important. To that end, I have a number of .com websites reflecting different areas of my business. Those are extremely important to me. It would be commercially deadly for someone else to purchase those domains as a .com. But I will still be subject to large increases to keep and renew those domains. The increases are significantly over the rate of inflation, year on year. This disproportionally affects small business owners like me, whose need for a .com is every bit as significant as a large corporate business. I am also concerned about the market distortion caused by allowing Version to operate its own registrar. I realise this currently does not include .com domains, although it seems clear there are ways this can be circumvented by Verisign acting as a reseller through another registrar. This will give Verisign, which already controls almost 80% of the registrar pricing for domain names, a position that manipulates and controls domain pricing. I understand the short-term gain of possibly pushing other registrars to price more cheaply, but the long-term probability is that those registrars are pushed out of the market, reducing choice and competition. I hope that this will be revisited and amended to support business owners and entrepreneurs who are so important to the global economy. Sincerely Joanna Pieters joannapieters.com London, UK