Dear Sir/Madam, I have learned via online research that ICANN intends to increase by over 70% the price of the .com TLD. I am writing this email to formerly object to this intention. The price of TLDs is already very high compared to the relative data storage cost for the period of 1 Year. Choosing to nearly double the cost of such TLDs simply because Verisign have essentially offered your organisation a $20 million dollar bribe is irresponsible. There is already a vast trend of domain name squatting, where vendors will automatically scoop up domains simply for the potential to resell them in the future. This behaviour has, and continues to, bias domain ownership in favour of the rich, and prevent fledgling businesses or other potential domain owners from having equal accessibility to the domain namespace. As a software engineer and web domain owner, I understand how automated the process of domain name registration & ownership is. While human-occupied jobs do exist within this realm, such as those working for top-level DNS providers and security firewalls for top-level DDOS protection and the like, the majority of the process of registering and managing domain names is performed and maintained by software agents. Therefore I do not see justification in such a hefty and spontaneous price hike, especially when money exchanging hands between your organisation and Verisign is involved. Please do not follow the monopolistic behaviour of companies like AT&T, Comcast or Verizon. The reason inequality is rife in America is due to rich-favouring tactics like these companies demonstrate. To follow suit by accepting the Verisign bribe simply to hike prices for the end consumer would be disastrous for the future of equality of domain accessibility. Please instead focus on setting a healthier and kinder example of encouraging equality, by redirecting your efforts to instead deconstruct and prevent domain squatting, or automated & exhaustive automated domain purchasing. This would help ensure that TLDs remain available and accessible to every person with such interest, rather than exclusively favouring the wealthy and supporting their ongoing land-grab in this arena. Yours sincerely, Nicholas Brown