Verisign. Reloaded.

Here we go again. Every time you think that we dodged the latest Verisign bullet, a new one comes at you.

According to Bob Parson’s blog (GoDaddy’s founder), they managed to convince ICANN to give them the keys to the .COM TLD for the next few years.

Fortunately, when their contract runs out, they…oh, wait, it will be automatically renewed without so much as an attempt to check what the competition has to offer.

Among other reasons to be worried: Verisign will, again, be the de facto monopoly and can RAISE registration fees, rather than following the natural trend, which is that everything Internet has to get cheaper as more people use it.

As a -very minor- member of the Internet Society and the Free Software Foundation, I am very concerned by this turn of events. Not to mention that my wallet is looking quite depressed as well.

I invite you to jump to Bob’s site and follow his instructions to write a letter to your representative.

Oh, I almost forgot: in this blog, Bob mentions a 28% price hike, based on a yearly 7% increase.

Of course, the actual number is:

x + x*7/100 + (x+x*7/100)*7/100 + ((x+x*7/100)*7/100)*7/100) + (((x+x*7/100)*7/100)*7/100))*7/100

which gives us: 31.07%