Concerns Regarding the Lifting of Price Controls on Registry Services

["Rafael Coninck Teigão" <rcteigao@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dears,

I find profoundly disturbing the fact that I may be put
out-of-business in 10 years because I cannot pay the high fees some
miscreant registrar thinks I owe them for the success of my domain.

Without pricing caps, a registrar may be tempted to piggyback on my
hardly conquered success, on my hard work and on the outcome of all my
investments and diverted risks.

This may lead to a situation similar to what we had with the Mafia in
NY City some decades back: demand "protection" fees. What ICANN is so
erroneously doing is giving registrar a green light to extort it's
users. Registrars may take away <<my>> profit without having to invest
in my business, without taking any of the risks that <<I>> will have
to take to make my business successful, without even contributing
significantly to my company. The worst of it is that this scenario may
be unavoidable -- and this brings too much uncertainty to what is
already an non-deterministic operation, like running a business.

I think it must be repeated: <<ICANN is trying to legalize extortion>>.

Please don't let this happen. Please don't let people be tempted to
create a separated domain system. Please don't give registrars the
ability to blackmail and extort us. This market isn't mature enough to
self-regulate just yet.

Also we have to consider the case in which a registrar wants to take
some domain off-line. The registrar may disagree with what is on a
website, an simply decide that it would be best to take it down. ICANN
is giving registrars the ability to <<censor>> websites by forcing the
ones they don't like off-line.

I think it must be repeated: <<ICANN is giving registrars FULL
CENSORSHIP powers>>.

Please reconsider the lifting of price controls, as it may be
extremely harmful to our Internet society. Don't let greed and
lobbyists ruin this wonderful experience for all of us. What good is
Internet for, if we can't hold a service on the same domain for more
than a year?

I hope we all can hear better news from ICANN.
Best regards,
Rafael Coninck Teigao
rcteigao at gmail dot com