The backlash over Verisign raising prices was picked up by a publication outside the domain industry.
ArsTechnica.com published a piece today that highlighted the concerns from registrars. The article discussed the potential for Verisign to make an additional $500 million per year.
It also honed in on price caps.
From the article:
While ICANN has eliminated price caps on .org and most other top-level domains, it doesn’t currently have the option to do that for .com. That’s because ICANN and Verisign’s oversight of the .com domain is itself overseen by the US Department of Commerce. Indeed, ICANN argues that it is merely complying with the wishes of the Department of Commerce, which authorized ICANN to raise the price caps by 7 percent annually back in 2018. ICANN would need approval from the Commerce Department to institute larger increases than the ones that have already been announced.
There are 47 comments on the article. The best one in my opinion was this one:
Why exactly does verisign need to increase fees? Have costs for running a registry suddenly increased? Is there an increased risk of nobody wanting dotcom domains anymore (other than from their increased prices?)
Do they give any reason, or is it just completely transparent ‘Screw you, the return on the investment of bribing a bunch of ICANN-officials was higher than the cost.’ ?
Also does ICANN have an office and is there a torches-and-pitchforks shop anywhere close to it?
See the original post at: https://www.thedomains.com/2020/02/11/verising-arstechnica/?rand=13941
