[ryan29]

GP is referring to the registry, not the registrar. There's lots of competition between registrars, but the registries have a post-sale monopoly on all domains.

Put another way, as soon as you register a .com domain, the only registry that can sell you a renewal is Verisign. If there weren't price controls, Verisign could increase the price of a .com renewal to $100 and there's nothing anyone could do but pay it.

This whole thread back to the root is right. Verisign has a monopoly, you can never drop a domain once it's associated with your business, and all of it should be regulated like a monopoly.

[huskyr]

Yup. Think about what happened when the Internet Society almost sold the .org TLD to Ethos Capital and they were planning on raising the registration prices by a lot.

[ryan29]

If you really want to get upset, go look what the NTIA did with the 2018 renewal of the .com agreement. Prior to 2018, the US DoC had a significant amount of oversight and control. The 2018 renewal pretty much gave .com to Verisign. The only thing the US DoC can do now is renew the contract as-is or withdraw.