On Friday, November 16th, ICA filed a letter addressed to Göran Marby regarding the .COM Registry Agreement, arguing that ICANN should reject any attempt by Verisign to increase its fees. Higher fees for Verisign are not justified, as demonstrated by the following four key points:
- a) Verisign is a provider of technical registry services, it does not own the .com name space;
- b) Verisign’s fees are not constrained by significant competition;
- c) Verisign is already well-paid for its services, as evidenced by its substantial profits;1 and
- d) ICANN need not approve fee hikes; on the contrary ICANN ought to assert its right to set reasonable fee levels for its hired registry manager.
Read the full letter here.