Here's an exchange from today's transcript of the ICANN Public Forum that you should read:

ELLIOT NOSS: 

Elliot Noss, Tucows.  I feel compelled to note that between now and the next time we all get together in Los Angeles at the end of October, beginning of November, perhaps the most significant and impactful event in ICANN's history will have taken place.
 
On October 15th, the price of a dot com will increase for the first time since ICANN's formation.

There, or shortly thereafter, the price of every other major gTLD will also increase.
 
I have been involved in the domain name policy process predating ICANN.  Like a lot of people in this room, some of you who are up on the dais now, the involvement dates back to the original CORE process in 1998.

In my view, there is no more impactful decision as it relates to domain name policy, domain name economics.  And because of those two things, the impact on Internet users and the decision to allow a price increase in dot com.

I would like to note that still, to this day, the justifications for that have been pragmatic and operational.

To this day, nobody at a staff level, at a board level, on any level has stood up and said that that decision and what flowed from it was good policy, was good stewardship, was good for the Internet or for Internet users.

What we saw subsequent to that was exactly what all of us feared.  VeriSign, and I want to be clear about this, in no way do I bring this on VeriSign's doorstep, they are a business doing what businesses should do.  VeriSign won -- Let me take a step back.

There was a series of compromises made in the previous dot com contract renegotiation.  I have referred to them loosely as a win-loose-draw.  We win a com renewal.  We effectively lose org.  And we get a draw around net in the sense that that will be a fair and open bid process. VeriSign won that dot net rebid.  And to a great extent, they won it on the basis of a price reduction.
 
It was nearly immediately thereafter that that dot net price that won that bid -- again, as well as every other gTLD registry -- sheltered under that dot com decision and had their prices increased.

I don't think there's anyone at a staff or a board level who would stand up today and say, if they knew that the price of dot net was going to increase, that VeriSign would have won that bid.  I don't think there is any bidder in that dot net rebid process that if they knew they had the opportunity to increase the price and could have made price certainty a part of their bid would not have included it.

I can say as somebody who participated in one of those bids, I would have happily done so.

What's done is done.

Here we are.

When we do as we have done today, spend all of our time -- which is what people do, it's what I do when I go back to my business -- on the little things, the important little things, the little operational details that we all can get very absorbed in, we often lose sight of the bigger things.

We all know that in the long term, we will not be remembered for the little things.  We will be remembered for the big things.  And I want to be very clear, again, that in all of my time in domain name policy, there is no single bigger thing that has taken place than that price increase.

I think that that creates -- First I want us all to take note of that.

Second, I want everybody who is part of the ICANN community, everybody, staff, board, people here, to take note of that.  And what we should all take away from that is that we owe something to Internet users because of that.

We owe them stewardship.  We owe them the consideration and the care to recognize why we are all here.

It's not about the little thing.  It's about the big things.

Last point.  A lot of you know I'm here with my son today, and he is purporting -- and I can't question his bona fides or not -- he is purporting to speak for over the 100 million Internet users 12 and younger.  And he has made it clear that he not only supports my comments today -- [Laughter ] --  but also wants to note I'm going to be riding off into the sunset at some point, and he is going to spend the rest of his Internet-using days paying for that decision.
 
Thank you.
 [ Applause ]

VINT CERF: 

Elliot, I can't resist -- I cannot resist observing that the subtext behind this might be that you made him pay for his domain name and now he wants an increase in his allowance to cover that 7% extra cost. [ Laughter ] I would like to suggest something to you, though.  Your point earlier about how long it's been that the price stayed fix has a slightly different interpretation to it.  And the inflation is still non-zero. 

So if you figure out a 7% increase over a 15-year period, that doesn't sound so terrible, does it?

ELLIOT NOSS: 

Let's parse that in a couple ways.  That would be important and relevant in this discussion if there was anybody standing up and saying that the price increase was cost-justified or would be justified in an open and fair market.

You know, I didn't want to go here.  You've opened the door for it.

There is no question that the largest providers of DNS -- and I've spoken to them -- in the world would happily do dot com at 50 cents a name.  There is no question that the largest providers of registry and registry-type services would happily do dot com probably without the DNS in the 50-cent to a dollar range.

I would -- boy, if you take DNS out of it, you know, I made a public comment that I'd do both for $2 years ago, Vint.  I'll do that without DNS for 50 cents today.

Inflation throughout, you know, the world economy today is at 2 or 3%, not 7%.

The cost elements of provisioning DNS have done nothing but go down.  MIPS, bandwidth, every element of it, storage, et cetera.

So while I understand the convenience of that thinking, I think that it doesn't hold up under even the simplest analysis, a 40-watt bulb, forget about a 100-watt bulb.

This post sponsored by Playcamp.com.