“Registrars consider there to be a breach of trust by the ICANN Board and the ICANN staff in approving a contract with Verisign regarding .net that contains significant changes from the draft .net agreement posted on the ICANN website, without public consultation,” said the statement, which was read by Bhavin Turakhia of Directi but backed by 33 registrars, including eNom, Go Daddy, Network Solutions, Tucows, Register.com , Melbourne IT, Dotster and Schlund (1&1 Internet) among others.

VeriSign and other registry operators maintain the central database of names for a top-level domain and manage transfers, while registrars sell the domains to the public. For each domain name the registry charges a baseline fee to the registrar, which can then set its own prices for sales to the public, which currently range from $4.95 to $34.99 per domain. ICANN has historically capped registry fees at either $6 or $4.25 per domain, depending on the top-level domain extension (TLD). The new contract reduces the current .net price cap from $6 to $4.25 through Dec. 31, 2006, but then lifts it altogether.