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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#111

Post by tlb »

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…

PE companies are very much in the business of valuing a revenue stream that goes up 10% per year highly. This article doesn't show thinking beyond 10-20 years, but most of the economic value comes even farther in the future. In 50 years, it could be 14000x the current price!

If you plug a 10%-growing revenue stream into a net-present-value formula with a discount rate less than 10%, you get infinity. The future revenue stream has infinite value. Even under reasonable economic uncertainty, you might be able to justify a P/E ratio of 100.

That hedge fund got a sweet deal.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#112

Post by ddevault »

IRS Form 13909 can be used to submit complaints about non-profit organizations to the IRS. Here are two pre-filled Form 13909's, one for ICANN and one for ISOC. Just print it out, add your personal information to both, and mail it to the address listed on the bottom of the form.

https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.pdf

Alternatively, this file can be opened with LibreOffice Draw to make edits and prepare your document digitally:

https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.odg

lodraw crash course: F2 + click drag to make a new text box, Ctrl+[ to reduce the font size to something reasonable, red icon in the toolbar along the top to export as PDF. You can send the document by email to eoclass@irs.gov.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#113

Post by jonnypotty »

Its fine because we're good and we get more money and Ethos are just simply good guys so that's good and nice so I voted "Yay" and now things are better because my organisation can keep me in a good job doing basically nothing whilst corporations buy up and exploit the internet.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#114

Post by ptest1 »

ddevault wrote: post #112

IRS Form 13909 can be used to submit complaints about non-profit organizations to the IRS. Here are two pre-filled Form 13909's, one for ICANN and one for ISOC. Just print it out, add your personal information to both, and mail it to the address listed on the bottom of the form. https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.pdf Alternatively, this file can be opened with LibreOffice Draw to make edits and prepare your docum…

I’m doing this! Both for PIR and ICANN.

Please see my other comment on this thread. It is likely this “sale” could be considered illegal.

Here is the information for ICANN which can be used for the above form as well:

https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy18-irs-tax-for...

Remember that the founder of this PE firm was at ICANN, so this transaction is self-dealing on ICANN’s end as well.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#115

Post by jobigoud »

Whatever he thinks of Ethos or the statements they are making isn't relevant anyway. It's a private firm, it can be itself bought and sold, acquired, merged, etc.

What happens if Google or Facebook or whatever suddenly wants to control .org? They just have to shell out a few millions?

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#117

Post by lacker »

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…

The registrar can simply raise the registration price of Wikipedia.org to a million dollars a year, and keep the random ones the same price, to extract any value from .org websites that rely on their domain name. The 10% a year is not a legal commitment, just an easily breakable informal promise.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#118

Post by ohyes »

the_angry_angel wrote: post #9

The simplified timeline (as I understand it, willing to be corrected if I'm wrong); 1. PIR, or someone very close, seems to have lobbied to have price restriction of .org removed. My understanding is that PIR made the argument that they're a non-profit, they have no reason to raise pricing extortionately 2. This was passed, despite a large number of comments against the idea, Ethos was incorporated the following day…

Seems about right to me, this stinks of whatever the non-profit version of regulatory capture is. I wonder how hard it would be to make a parallel ICANN.

I guess this is naiive, but how can a non profit sell itself to a for-profit, it seems all sorts of wrong.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#119

Post by leoedin »

What is it with international supervisory bodies and blatant corruption (or maybe incredible incompetence)? This has real parallels to the International Olympic Committee and FIFA. I guess the parallels for all of them are a monopolistic position (and in many cases an essentially government granted one) with basically no oversight. Those conditions just seem to breed corruption.
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