Who sets the prices for domains?
Proposed pricing changes in the upcoming contracts for .info .org and .biz would introduce chaos to the domain market. Here is a good article about it and here is the forum to comment on it.
Lots of folks were unhappy about the recent changes to Verisign’s contract for .com - well I can assure you the effects of that will be gradually impacting the market to the tune of 7% per year. This on the other hand creates the opportunity for dramatic changes. Registries are free to set arbitrary prices on domains they want to affect. Do you think a blog site criticizing PIR at some domain like pir-sucks-and-should-be-made-fun-of.org would be allowed to engage in free, albeit ignorant speech? No, the renewal price would simply be adjusted to, say $1 million and that would be the end of that. Not to pick on PIR too much, they’re really much better netizens than some of their competitors.
