Re: Amendment 35: The U.S. Department of Commerce stated that ccTLDs, new gTLDs and social media “have created a more dynamic DNS marketplace”, and as such, it’s appropriate for Verisign to have pricing flexibility.

Regarding NEW DOMAIN REGISTRATION, this logic may hold true.
When someone is registering a new domain, they are free to choose among the various domain extensions. Thus, competition between extensions helps to keep them all fair.

Regarding DOMAIN RENEWALS, however, this logic absolutely does not apply.
The individual registrants have put years of work into increasing the value of their domains -- leaving us virtually hostage to any RENEWAL increases. As domain registrants, we are not able to just switch to a different extension if we can find a better deal.

If anything, it may be best to strip Verisign of the . com management monopoly and allow multiple registrars access to . com management.

How bad could things get if Amendment 35 passes?
When I began as a web developer in the 1990s, Network Solutions (a Verisign company) was the only available registrar for . com domain registrations.

The domain registration/renewal price was $35/year and our agency would often have to call Network Solutions for tech support. The 'on-hold' time was typically around 8 hours!

So, the first person to the office every morning would call Network Solutions only to be put on hold. We would put it on speaker phone and go on with our work. That way, we could batch our questions together throughout the day and ask them all at once when Network Solutions would finally pick up by the end of the business day.

As soon as Network Solutions lost that registrar monopoly and other registrars began competing, domain registrations immediately dropped to $6/year, if I recall correctly. And the new registrars answered phone calls promptly.

In my experience Verisign, left unbridled, will destroy the . com extension and the internet as we know it.

Please do not approve Amendment 35!