Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

I cannot believe someone actually wrote that down.

The registries do not allow a domain to be registered for more than 10 years in the future, so the way NS implements this is by initially registering it for 10 years for you, and then automatically registering an additional year each year.

That only works out for NS if prices don't rise too much over the next 100 years.

I haven't read their terms to see if they have some sort of escape clause to get out of the 100 year deal if prices rise too much.

Perhaps private equity could also take control of oxygen supply? If prices get out of control, perhaps the market will make other respirable gases available?

I’m sure I’ll regret writing something so emotive, but I really resent being backed into what feels like could easily be labeled a loony-left corner on this debate. Is this .org sell off an exercise in driving those who lean even slightly towards moderately left economics into insanity, incapacitating them?

"Naive" in this context generally means they were overly trusting when there was no evidence to suggest trust was warranted. I'd interpret "worse than naive" as saying that they are actually evidence to the contrary.

The logic presented is, "We need more money, so we sold it to this private equity firm. But don't worry, they're not going to try to squeeze lots of money from it."

The starting point for any for-profit company -- no matter how ethically run -- is that they buy things because the expected value to them will be higher than the cash they paid for it. We must assume that the expected value of PIR to the equity company is higher than the amount they paid IS for it. Which means, either IS is actually getting less (or at best the same) money than they would have for keeping PIR, or it means that Ethos is going to charge significantly more than IS is. The fact that Ethos bought PIR is prima facae evidence that it's a bad deal for either IS or for the internet as a whole.

I mean, there are other possibilities, but none is really good. It's possible that someone at Ethos capital actually did want to do IS a favor, and way over-paid for PIR. But that's just a form of embezzlement; I certainly wouldn't feel any better to know that .org was bought by someone who was either incompetent or a criminal.

If you want to set up a long-term self-funding organization to do good rather than making money, you don't do private equity; you set up a foundation. Ethos, or whoever wants to make the world a better place, could provide a loan to such an organization.

And even if you do decide to buy something, you put your promises in writing in the form of a contract.

And even supposing Ethos really does mean all the things they say. Suppose something happens and they go bust and have to liquidate their assets. What happens then?

There are just so many red flags here, that "too trusting" doesn't even begin to describe it.