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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#171

Post by mod50ack »

VLM wrote: post #97
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #37

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.

According to the general public the only TLD is .com My kids school can't use a .edu domain because everyone insists on typing in variations on whatever.edu.com and its just too much of a headache. My home town can't use a .gov domain because everyone insists on typing in variations on cityname.gov.com and its just too much of a headache. Even more hilariously my city name is my county name so there's a turf battle o…

So far from the case.

Your kids' school can't use a .edu domain because this is reserved for use by higher education bodies. If your kids were university students, they'd be using .edu, I guarantee it. Every reputable institution in the US uses .edu. (Outside the US, universities all follow various national systems.)

Local government is a terrible example because these are approximately the worst organizations ever when it comes to domain choice and the like (government and all).

In any case, people are typing whatever.com, not whatever.edu.com or whatever.gov.com, if they are indeed typing whatever.com.

Have you ever heard of wikipedia.org? That's a pretty popular site on a .org domain. And no, not everybody assumes it's a .com.

If .org were squeezed, thousands upon thousands of us would have to painfully change our email addresses, our organizations' domains, etc., making things both significantly harder to find and interrupting years of continuity in most cases.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#172

Post by cartoonworld »

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…

I think Richard's piece leaves out everything of substance. I don't understand how this helps the ISOC mission, users of .org, the public interest of the Internet at large, or anyone at all except of course Ethos Capital.

PIR, the registrar in question generated $48 Million in support grants for ISOC in 2018 tax return. He's trying to make the case that selling this $50million revenue from grants is worth it. He think the governance of .org and the maximum possible cost increase will be fine.

What possible reasons has he given for any of that?

He vaguely indicates that it'll be fine, and instead asserts that $28/yr could be affordable? It is, but why not just jack up the price in the first place, if its a money thing? They could be getting $100-Million in ten years, why sell it off to a private capital investment firm with no track record of "Governance" and a mandate only to private shareholders and investors?

If you happen to check https://ethoscapital.mu/investments/ to read all about their clear mandate for Governance (whatever that means the the context of "Exposure to a Diversified Pool of Unlisted Assets") hopefully the irony[0][1] of their using the .mu (Mauritius) tld is not lost on you. Sorry if this last bit seems petty, but just wow. What about any of this makes anyone think this doesn't look like a gift to private equity? I would like to see the sale price.

[0] https://business.mega.mu/2013/07/29/internet-210-government-...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20141110042124/http://news.islan...

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#173

Post by timwaagh »

There is a reason the author is on the board that gets to decide this. I wish the relevant people would just pocket the money and book a plane ticket to an offshore location, rather than bragging about it on social media. That way at least some people other than the hedge fund would get something out of this deal. I can understand simple corruption. I too need a fast-ish sportscar and a decently sized mansion to fuel my habits. But this, I cannot understand at all.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#174

Post by femto113 »

simonh wrote: post #123
agwa wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Their margins on new domain sales are thin, but the cost of changing domain names for a big owner of a prestigious .org domain could be huge. So jack up the renewal price to gouge existing domain owners, then drop the prices again to entice in new registrants.

Or follow the model of banks profiting off of debit cards by charging exorbitant fees for common mistakes. They didn't need that a high percentage of their customers to pay overdraft fees before they were making billions. Forget to renew your domain on time? No problem, we've held on to it for you, just please pay this $150 "redemption fee".

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#175

Post by munk-a »

ben509 wrote: post #153
nothrabannosir wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ove…

Wikipedia could absorb a trivial cost increase so it's likely that a PE firm would target them with more steep increases. From what I've read about their price increase limiting "agreement" it isn't one, it's just a statement and isn't laid out in any binding contracts.

Maybe Wikipedia gets it's registration price bumped up to 3 million because the PE firm thinks the org can absorb the cost.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#177

Post by andrewprock »

TumorousJoker wrote: post #38
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…

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

The funny thing is that despite his credentials, he made such a spectacular blunder. It makes one wonder when the other shoe will drop for "Let's Encrypt".

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#178

Post by ramphastidae »

cbkeller wrote: post #154

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 (t…

Of course they are aware. This post is PR bullshit to cover up the facts you mentioned.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#179

Post by driverdan »

I'm surprised no one mentioned that Barnes works for Cisco:

> Richard Barnes is Chief Security Architect for Collaboration at Cisco

Cisco has had backdoored equipment and far too many security vulnerabilities. They supply equipment to suppressive regimes like China, allowing these countries to block, filter, and monitor internet traffic in an effort to suppress human rights.

Someone who works for a company like that should not be trusted with important decisions related to fundamental parts of the internet.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#180

Post by femto113 »

im3w1l wrote: post #108
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…

Changing domains is not easy, but if you bring up 20+ year horizons, then it is definitely viable to change domains to deal with rising costs.

Except that the way trademark law works in the US you have to "defend" your marks or they can be considered abandoned. This means as long as renewing your domain is cheaper than the cost of hiring an attorney to send a Cease and Desist letter to the squatter who grabs it after you're better off paying. I'm guessing that horizon is more like 30-40 years off.
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