[ohashi]

This is the most obvious reason why Verisign is a monopolist and should be regulated like a utility. They make false claims about choice and not being locked in. You buy a domain, you use it, you're locked in forever. And they know it. That's why they fight tooth and nail to protect their monopoly.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

It’s worse if you stop using the phrase ‘buy’ and instead use the term ‘rent’. A DNS provider could 10,000x your domain cost and there’s nothing you can do about it.

[nl]

> A DNS provider could 10,000x your domain cost

DNS providers can't do this.

It's domain registries that can.

[robert_tweed]

This actually happened to me, but fortunately I never actually used the domain. I registered tweed.dev intending to use robert.tweed.dev as a personal blog. It wasn't classed as a "premium" domain and the first year was £5 or something IIRC, which was half price compared to the normal renewal fee.

The next year they decided it was premium after all, and wanted to charge £492,000 for renewal. I still have a screenshot of that, although needless to say I don't own the domain anymore.

[Tepix]

No kidding. I had a one letter .tm domain name back in the 90s and they (Turkmenistan) increased the fee to $1000/year.

[j-bos]

Can they? I thought ICANN prevented such steep increases?

[adr1an]

We can prevent this by paying the domain registrar ahead of time for N years. It's not a real solution, but it works (as good as any patch)

[parineum]

And if you're domain is really worth that much, you can sell it before it expires.

[mapt]

See also personal phone numbers, which are now "portable" and thus "required for every single identity verification you will ever perform", without being regulated, which means your identity is one $30 bill autopayment or one dodgy MVNO customer service interaction from being lost forever.

[amerkhalid]

And try sharing a phone number. Almost every service assumes that everyone in a household has their own phone. Which is of course not true.

It just makes many services such as Credit Karma unavailable to anyone but the first person to signup.

[semiquaver]

Phone number portability is required by law in the US since 2003. See 47 U.S.C. § 251(b)(2)

https://www.fcc.gov/general/wireless-local-number-portabilit...

[astrange]

Not regulated? They're portable because they're regulated.

[ossyrial]

There is an alternative to such regulation though. In the Netherlands, all registrars are required to support automatic transfer between registrars. You can lookup your "transfer code", which you can enter at a new registrar, and they will handle that your domain is transferred (with proper DNS etc) and your old subscription stops.

[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.