Renewal of the .org, .biz, and .info registry contracts

[Suzette <sfleury@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To the ICANN Board,
        
        The proposed TLD Registry Renewal Contracts for .info, .biz, and .org
        domains have a seriously flawed component whereby a Registry will be
        able to set arbitrary rates without price caps at whatever the market
        will bear. This will create a financially devastating impact on the
        business models of millions of domain and web site owners worldwide.
        
        The impact will be especially damaging to .org and .info domain
        owners and site operators who for the most part use .org and .info
        domains for non-profit, charitable organizations, and educational
        purposes.
        
        Hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested into the core
        domain name infrastructure of the Internet with the secured
        expectation that acquiring, owning and maintaining domains would
        always be affordable and make economic sense for a long term
        investment.
        
        To enable and facilitate a way for registry's to financially exploit
        and gouge the marketplace would not only be a business tragedy, but
        it goes against the grain of all the base principles upon which the
        Internet was conceived. It would certainly deter new entrepreneurs
        from considering venturing onto the Net if there is no certainty what
        their site's URL location will be costing them each year they renew.
        And the vast multitude of current domain owners and web site
        operators would close up shop if their costs of doing business
        skyrocketed on every domain they own.
        
        Even more importantly, this flaw would give an unfair economic
        advantage to individuals and corporations who have substantial
        capital resources who could outbid less fortunate and startup
        entrepreneurs with limited capital.
        
        And inevitably, there would be a tidal wave of costly and time
        consuming lawsuits and litigation that ICANN itself would have to
        deal with from the millions of impacted domain owners.
        
        Thus, I respectfully request that you reconsider and reconstruct the
        contracts and remove this no price caps clause completely.