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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#52
post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

Yeah this is a frankly insane take for me.

>For those who might be unfamiliar with the Internet Society, our mission is as follows:

Nobody cares, that's utterly irrelevant as long as operating .org doesn't go against the Society's mission statement (which it clearly doesn't). By the author's own admission "While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business". So you are staked so heavily in a single business that instead of using the income and stability it provides to diversify you just get rid of it altogether? Utter nonsense. That's just greed and short-term gains.

I hope this is naivety and not pure gaslighting.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#53
post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

> > We're all trying to make the Internet a better place

> No we're not. Don't be an idiot. Private equity companies are making money from investments they have no interest in making anything a better place and it's insulting to expect people to believe that.

I'm kind of a conservative (read classical liberal) free market kind of guy - but this is a total shit-show IMO. I simply don't see anything that will prevent market failure in this case - there is nothing I can see that incentivises good behavior.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#54
post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

The author is not naive. He is most likely malicious.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#55
post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

> during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. That is not what is written in the Registry Agreement. "Registry Operator shall offer registrars the option to obtain domain name registration renewals at the current price ... for periods of one (1) to ten (10) years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten (10) years."

In practice, this says the same thing. There's no reason for registrars not to let their customers lock in the low price for 10 years. There's stiff competition among registrars and their margins on domain name sales are razor thin. They make their money by selling various add-on services. It's better for them if registry prices are low because that encourages people to buy more domains, and thus more add-on services.

For example, Namecheap came out strongly against removing .org price caps: https://www.namecheap.com/blog/ensuring-icann-keep-domain-pr...

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#56
post #27

So...how much does it cost to run gTLD these days? Perhaps the time is right to set up a non-profit to run one at actually affordable prices, instead of the current ripoff and the future .org price increases.

You have to pay about $200k to ICANN just to submit a proposal for a new gTLD.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#57
post #10

This author is just outright naive. >Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices (which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rat…

I think it's worse than naive. His two points are in impossible conflict. He wanted a pile of money for the Internet Society, enough to "secure that work's future". But the only way selling .org is worth a pile of money is if it gets extracted from nonprofits. With plenty of profits left over to feed the investors who put up the initial cash.

If the Internet Society wanted to secure their future, they should have raised a proper endowment. Or they could have kept .org and bumped the prices modestly so it made a profit equivalent to what an endowment would pay. Selling it to a PE company is guaranteed to be worse for .org registrants, because the amount of money extracted will be greater, and a PE firm will be way less accountable. Especially a shadowy one just created for this.

And for those not familiar with the horrors of PE, I recommend reading about what happened to Simmons Mattress once the financial engineers got a hold of it: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmon...

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#59

How relevant is a TLD anymore? There are so many options. Most people seem to use Google, and then after visiting the site, they use whatever the autocomplete in their address bar is. Or, they use an app. At least in India, I've seen most people doing this on their smartphones. Nobody likes to type in the address bar anymore.

Even if the TLD is irrelevant for new domains, losing your existing domain (with all its back links, Google score, email reputation, etc) can be hard, so existing .org domain holders may be in for a nasty choice.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#60
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just funny to me that he felt the need to start listing out his credentials before explaining his stand.

That's reasonable in this case, people often complain (and sometimes reasonably so) that the people in this bureaucratic entities are far removed from the "real world" and don't really understand what they're dealing with.

Too bad his credentials did not make his argument good. I bet if he actually had a good argument ... well then nobody would be complaining that his argument is bad.
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