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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#61

Post by Thorrez »

Traster wrote: 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…

>This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rate to even take effect for existing registrants, and new registrations would likely fall off right away.

It's the exact opposite of that. As soon as you announce a price hike, you don't get a giant loss of money, you get a giant flood of money as tons of people pre-pay for 10 years.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#62

Post by wpietri »

jawns wrote: post #23

> So if we take Ethos at their word It is unfortunate that we have a business culture where to take someone at their word is not only naive but so reckless that the duped gets most of the blame rather than the duper. And yet, here we are. This is the reality. Taking a private equity firm "at their word" is so foolish that it's hard to believe the author isn't being disingenuous.

Any lawyer in the world would have said, "No, Dickie, we don't just take companies at their word once the money changes hands. That's what contracts are for." At best this guy is incompetent, assuming his technical skills magically transfer to being business skills. But like you, I have a hard time thinking he believes any of this.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#63

Post by cartoonworld »

oefrha wrote: post #49
danpalmer wrote: post #14

> Make .org domain names "accessible and reasonably priced for all", including limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year This immediately stuck out to me as a really bad deal. Rising with inflation, somewhere between 1 and 4% per year, would essentially keep prices stable. This is tricky when selling internationally, but roughly possible. Rising by 10% each year is significantly faster than inflation, and…

Not sure why OP tosses out 10% price hikes per year as reassuring. Maybe he’s too rich to make sense of small amounts of money like this. Even $10 is a nontrivial sum in some underdeveloped countries as is. Also, this is just “what Ethos themselves have said about their intentions with regard to .org”, and we all know how good for-profit entities are at keeping promises that affect their bottom line.

His argument seems to be:

1: The Internet Society does great work protecting the Internet 2: Ethos is a worthy successor to the Internet Society as the steward of .org.

This is incoherent. THis blog post can be summed up in one sentence: "I reckon its fine."

Thanks for voting to sell .ORG Richard Barnes. I know he thinks its fine, I think jacking the prices up 10% year over year is nonsense. What do the financials look like and what's the internet getting out of this?

A money grab looks like a money grab.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#64

Post by apple4ever »

icebraining wrote: post #56
Tharkun wrote: 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.

Because it costs so much to add a new gTLD /sarcasm

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#65

Post by [deleted] »

agwa wrote: post #55
tobltobs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#66

Post by jmull »

Traster wrote: 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…

You're very nice, because "naive" is a very generous interpretation.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#67

Post by [deleted] »

agwa wrote: post #55
tobltobs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#68

Post by archi42 »

"While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business, and required a certain amount of our resources to be spent managing that business, distracting from the broader mission."

So, now they don't have any significant income stream anymore? Great! So once they run out of money from the sell, they're closing down? That is, unless they find some other way to generate a profit to burn on non-profitable-but-good things (like they're doing now). For which .org was the perfect fit?

I mean, if THEY would have increased prices by 10% per-year for the next few years, well, I think people would have been mad, too. But not as much as now, since at least the money would have flown to some "good use"(tm). But now? Cash flows to private investors, who expect (surprise!) to EARN money on that deal.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#70

Post by syshum »

>>> 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

Or the could announce a massive increase to get all the .org owners to register for 10 years to give them a massive influx of capital right away, then divest that capital in to some other venture, then sell PIR to someone else. I am sure Verisign would love to buy it, or Donuts

the Internet Society can not stop them from off loading it in a couple of years after they extract their money from the .org space.

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