VeriSign Increases Domain Name Pricing

BillGatesLoveChild writes "CNET reports VeriSign has made its move, increasing domain name prices by 7%. From October 15 2007, .com domains will now cost $6.42 (up from $6) and .net domains $3.85 per annum. ICANN had previously voted to support the increase. Despite annual income of $323.4M from .com domain names alone, VeriSign claims it needs the increase to provide "a high level of security and reliability for .com." This increase comes in the face of complaints by customers, registrars and senators alike that VeriSign is abusing its ICANN monopoly. Yet the furrowed brows and promises of senators of investigations have come to nothing, even though the only people seemingly in favor of the monopoly are ICANN and VeriSign. With complaints about the pair running back to 2002, what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously?"

Comments

Re:Voting Power

[krbvroc1]

Kind of reminds me of much ado about Exxonmobil. Say, whatever happened with those congressional hearings about an $8 billion dollar profit for a single quarter? Well, it turns out that over the past 25 years oil companies paid more than $2.2 trillion in taxes (adjusted for inflation). That is more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period. What your misleading example fails to factor in are the 'other costs'. How many trillions of tax dollars have we spent providing 'security'/'defense' for the oil industry, billions propping up corrupt governments so these oil companies can access the resource, thousands of lives lost, etc. Talk about a corporate subsidy. None of those trillions have been paid for by oil companies as a cost of their product, so the free market has not factored that in. Hell, we haven't even paid for it, our children and grandchildren will be paying for it. If the price of oil truly reflected these costs and subsidies, other alternative products would be more attractive in the market.