The top domain owner on the planet, Frank Schilling of NameAdministration has posted comments too:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/biz-tld.../msg00005.html
If it might affect his business, are you going to gamble that your business won't be affected?
Gideon: This is the price that the registries would charge to the registrars, which would then be passed along to the domain owners.
To be more clear, PIR, that operates the .org registry, could produce a price list for domain renewals in the form:
pussy.org -- $1 million/year
sex.org -- $1 million/yr
casino.org -- $250,000/yr
movies.org -- $100,000/yr
microsoft.org -- $2 million/yr
google.org -- $5 million/yr
gghhghg.org -- $5/yr
abc.org -- $20,000/yr
republicans.org -- $200,000/yr
democrats.org -- $10,000/yr
shop.org -- $50,000/yr
etc. A scheme like the above, to registrars (keeping equal treatment between registry and registrar, which is required by the contract) would mean the costs for registrars changes, and they could then add their own markup to the pricelist provided by the registry.
This would obviously be a dramatic shift in the market. Vint Cerf called it "suicidal". But, registries are very shrewd, and if there's nothing to stop them from maximizing profits by doing the above, it would make sense for them to do it.