Why I Voted to Sell .ORG • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#151

Post by cartoonworld » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #98

cartoonworld wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

.org registry was already a pretty good cash cow. According to their tax return[1], in 2018 they grossed ~$93m over ~$33m registry administration expense, ~$7m employee compensation (interestingly there's a 30% year over year increase here), and some other smaller expenses. They raised $48.7m for Internet Society. Note that out of registry administration expense, $18.1m went to Afilias[2] (this should also be in the…

As you said, according to the 2018 tax return revenues from PIR running .org resulted in $48,000,000.00 in cash grants handed over to the Internet Society.

How much is the sale worth? That $48M Grant was worth more than Internet Society's total revenue in 2016 according to wkipedia. ISOC just sold a sustainable $50Million revenue stream.

If LetsEncrypt copped a $0.10 fee per certificate, how much would it cost for Richard to rubber stamp a Symantec acquisition of LetsEncrypt?

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#152

Post by pmontra » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #145

wpietri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rai…

Help me understand what you mean by "worse than naive" here. Richard Barnes isn't going to see a dollar of this money and wouldn't need it anyways. I understand people disagreeing with him, but, despite being automatically disinclined to extend good faith to anything published at CircleID, I don't understand where anyone derives bad faith from this piece. I thought it was tremendously useful, if only to understand wh…

> Help me understand what you mean by "worse than naive" here

"Worse than naive" doesn't necessarily mean "bad faith" but possibly causing losses to other people without deriving a gain can still be "worse than naive". It's a quote rephrased for kindness.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#153

Post by ben509 » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #85

ben509 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is nothing I can see that incentivises good behavior. Competition with all the other registries? For the most cost sensitive domain owners, they typically have a presence on social media and contact with users via email. And, of course, they're usually discovered by search engine rather than domain. So the switching costs are quite low and the demand extremely elastic.

How much would it cost society as a whole if WikiPedia switched away form .org? Think of all the printed links, now defunct. Think of the value of that domain to an occupant with less scruples, once left behind. The confused people who will find themselves on a WikiPedia-esque, ad and scam ridden copy. And that’s just WikiPedia. This is a shitshow of historic proportions for the internet as a whole. It will be rememb…

Not all consumers are equal.

Wikipedia sized organizations would easily absorb the relatively trivial cost, so, they wouldn't switch. Their demand is relatively inelastic to price.

The people switching are going to be the far more numerous smaller operations, who are elastic to price.

And, of course, anyone signing up for a new domain is highly elastic.

Because there are lots of people who are highly elastic, the overall demand is highly elastic.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#154

Post by cbkeller » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

I think it's worth noting some of the timeline of this [1]:

> On May 13, 2019, ICANN announced that they would remove the price cap on .org registrations (despite 98% disapproval in public comments [2])

> On May 14, 2019, the private equity firm Ethos Capital was founded by former ICANN chief executive Fadi Chehadé and investor Erik Brooks.

> On November 13, 2019, it was announced that the Public Interest Registry (that manages .org) had agreed to be acquired by Ethos Capital, as its first investment.

> Subsequently, PIR announced it would abandon its non-profit status to become a B Corporation.

Is the author unaware of this, in on the deal, or just remarkably naive?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry [2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s...

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#155

Post by cbkeller » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

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…

Yeah, and the fact that Ethos is run by a former CEO of ICANN is incredibly shady.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#156

Post by whydoyoucare » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

It is not only naive, there is the classic "appeal to authority" fallacy in the mix too! Someone wanted to badly do some damage control, which does not seem to have achieved it purpose.

And yes, as someone stated, privaty equity companies want to make money from their investments, believing anything else as their "goal" is utter foolish.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#157

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #145

wpietri wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rai…

Help me understand what you mean by "worse than naive" here. Richard Barnes isn't going to see a dollar of this money and wouldn't need it anyways. I understand people disagreeing with him, but, despite being automatically disinclined to extend good faith to anything published at CircleID, I don't understand where anyone derives bad faith from this piece. I thought it was tremendously useful, if only to understand wh…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#158

Post by rinze » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

> If we take Ethos at their word

This guy must be new to this whole Crony Capitalism thing.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#159

Post by rinze » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #58

Renewing my .org domains now for as long as I can.

I just did the same. I'm with Dreamhost, and from the panel you can only do that for 2 years, but if you contact them they'll let you do another 5 additional years.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#160

Post by unexaminedlife » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

It's obvious the author and apparently their entire board didn't believe their role was an important one.

In the end it sounds like whoever was doing the voting ended up putting the wrong people in charge.

Would be useful to have a public reference listing the names of those who made this vote so future non-profits don't make the same mistake.