Re: [ga] Afilias to increase .info price effective October 15, 2007

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ted and all,

  I agree with your response fully.  I am starting to get some comments
from our members as well, and so far they are three to one against such
a cost increase and some, about 50% believe a reduction in price on
all domain name registrations would better fit the "Real" situation.

  I personally am beginning to believe that there is a price fixing
scheme afoot here which has RICO implications.

Prophet Partners Inc. wrote:

>    Afilias has notified ICANN of a price increase to $6.15 for new
> .info registrations and renewals. The price change will coincide with
> VeriSign's price increase for .com and .net effective October 15,
> 2007. In our opinion, this looks more like collusion and price fixing,
> than a competitive free market environment. We believe it is only a
> matter of time before similar unjustified price increases are
> announced by PIR for .org and NeuLevel for .biz.
> http://icann.org/correspondence/laplante-to-twomey-13apr07.pdf
>
> We believe it is outrageous that wholesale domain prices are rising,
> when the prices of technology products and services continue to
> plummet. This includes, but is not limited to computing power, memory,
> data storage and broadband. The monopolistic registries are making
> obscene profits at the expense of the registrant community, while
> ICANN continues to ignore the best interests of the public that it was
> entrusted to protect. Former ICANN Board member Karl Auerbach was
> recently interviewed for an article at Jay Westerdal's DomainTools
> blog titled "ex-ICANN Board member says .COM costs $0.14".
> http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/04/ex-icann-board-member-
> ays-com-costs-014/
>
> VeriSign cited the growing number of daily DNS queries as being one
> reason that justified their price increases for .com and .net. They
> claimed that VeriSign's DNS received 1 billion daily queries in 2000
> and 30 billion daily queries in 2007.
> http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_5602425
>
> This increase is not only offset by the greater economies of scale
> from selling more .com and .net domain registrations, but the
> increased computing power of CPUs. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel
> is widely credited for Moore's Law, which states that "the number of
> transistors on a chip doubles about every two years". As stated on
> Intel's official Moore's Law page, "But Moore's Law also means
> decreasing costs. As silicon-based components and platform ingredients
> gain in performance, they become exponentially cheaper to produce, and
> therefore more plentiful, more powerful, and more seamlessly
> integrated into our daily lives." We would like to emphasize the
> phrase "exponentially cheaper".
> http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/
>
> We would also like to remind everyone that ICANN completely
> disregarded the near unanimous public opposition to the proposed
> .biz/.info/.org registry agreements, by unanimously approving the
> highly controversial contracts at the São Paulo, Brazil meeting on
> December 8, 2006.
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/biz-tld-agreement
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/info-tld-agreement
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/org-tld-agreement
> http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg05299.html
>
> Sincerely,
> Ted
> Prophet Partners Inc.
> http://www.ProphetPartners.com
> http://www.Premium-Domain-Names.com
>
> CC: John M.R. Kneuer (Assistant Secretary of Commerce for
> Communications and Information, U.S. Department of Commerce - NTIA)
>     Vint Cerf (Chairman of the Board, ICANN)
>     Anick Jesdanun (Associated Press)
>     Arik Hesseldahl (BusinessWeek)
>     Paul Sloan (Business 2.0)
>     Scott Ard (c|net)
>     Rachel Rosmarin (Forbes)
>     Adam Gaffin (NetworkWorld)
>     Brian Krebs (The Washington Post)
>     CNN News Tips
>     The N.Y. Times News Tips
>

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

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very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

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