ICANN Plans to Allow Verisign to Increase Prices on .Com Domain
https://www.theregister.co.ukThe operator of the dot-com registry, Verisign, has decided to pay DNS overseer ICANN a donation of $4m a year for the next five years in order to renegotiate the contract to hike .com registration prices. The agreement would allow Verisign to increase prices by 7% in each of the last four years of each six-year contract renewal. This is in line with an agreement Verisign struck with the U.S. government to amend the Cooperative Agreement. The wholesale price of a .com should increase from USD $7.85 to USD $10.26 over the next four years, and registrars will add their own markup.
You can voice your opinion on the Proposed Amendment, I don’t expect they would put much weight to the communities opinion with the $20 million donations they just received.