Hi,

I am against the proposed price increases to .com domain names as I feel this will negatively impact individuals and emerging or small businesses, tipping the (once much more level) playing field towards established and larger entities and corporations (for whom such price increases are insignificant and helpfully serve to remove low level and first mover competition for them).

This is quite sad since the web once provided an historically unusual diversity and equality of opportunity that I considered a significant  aspect of its underlying spirit (along with openness, freedom of speech/ideas, and co-operation). Something that slips away from us as it becomes increasingly centralised and under control of large commercial quasi-monopolies.

I was under the impression that ICANN governed the domain name system in the public interest, and had become a central piece of the modern internet largely by being perceived as a well governed non-profit organization. It seems that by allowing the increase of prices beyond that which is necessary to fulfil the provision of .com, it will ultimately lose ICANN good will (or I should say a more good will, since people are still smarting from the way .org was managed recently).

Amongst the more tech savvy there are already alternative decentralised systems emerging, so I guess there is that. It would seem unlikely that they will gain traction and overtake the current centralised and increasingly commercialised approaches, but then again - many said that about the free software movement and open source and look how that turned out online.

The current rate of $7.85 already appears more than justified since other registries claim they can offer the same service for much less, estimating the management of the registry to cost between $2.50 to $2.90 per domain name per year. As processing power, storage and bandwidth increases dramatically and becomes cheaper with the passing years, prices for providing the service appear to be heading in the other direction at some pace.

This seems contrary to what I would expect to happen in what is purported to be a capitalist system. It leads one to wonder why that is the case.

Perhaps decentralisation and deregulation, the removal of ICANNs non-profit status, and increased competition in service provision is on the horizon. Or for an emerging alternative to take it's place. ICANNs recent handling of the .org domain and this recent .com proposal appears to be providing some fuel to the fire in the bellies of those trying to push in that direction.

It will be interesting to see how things work out in the long run.

Best wishes

John Barker