> How is this anything but rent seeking on the part of Verisign?
While I generally agree with you --this smells like potential rent-seeking--, in order to be able to conclusively label it as such we have to know about the real cost structure that drives a company like Verisign. All of that information is here:
https://investor.verisign.com/financial-information/annual-r...
I wish I had the time to dive into this. I just don't. I generally try to avoid making assertions without having done some work in support of them. That's why I can't reach this conclusion --I can suspect it to be true though.
As a reminder, "rent" in "rent seeking" isn't the colloquial "rent", as in what you pay to rent a car or a house. Economic rent, as a term of trade, is related to financial gains obtained without increases in productivity. As such it has been "fuzzified" to make it apply to all kinds of things that have nothing whatsoever to do with economic rent-seeking. As an example of real rent-seeking, an article in Forbes describes how writing an essay in college to obtain a grant (and maybe even admission or tuition discounts) is classic rent-seeking. Same with a company lobbying government for subsidies --they didn't make their process or product better in exchange for the financial gain.
In other words, the question here is squarely centered around the real cost structure at Verisign. Frankly, I don't know everything they do and how much it costs to support the TLD's they administer. I still remember when domains were free --as a fool, I didn't register a pile of them back then.
It sure feels like rent-seeking. That doesn't mean it is. Without the proper analysis of their accounting this characterization might not be correct. In other words, it might be quite possible that they can fully justify the increase in rates due to increases in costs.
Not to go too far, wages have gone up across the board (in numerical, not real terms) and inflation has made everything more expensive. Power, taxes, food, transportation, labor, etc. Every single business has had their cost structure increase, in some cases dramatically so. Given this framework, I'd be cautious about ascribing nefarious intent to any business increasing their pricing.
Put a different way: A rent-seeking claim needs to include a "Minimum Viable Financial Analysis" in support of this conclusion. Prices going up isn't enough evidence of this at all. Not liking price increases is no evidence at all.