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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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191–200 of 316 posts

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#191
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there any precedent where the abandonment of a domain has been accepted by the courts as abandonment of a trademark?

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#192
Looks like OP is based in Washington D.C.

Guess he was feeling left out when it came to all the lobbying money and croney corruption.

Strange he never addressed the fact that a new non-profit wasn't set up to control the domain.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay about $200k to ICANN just to submit a proposal for a new gTLD.

Those are the vanity domains bidding for a proper tld is much more $$$

From what I can tell, generic TLDs like .community or .theatre are enrolled under the same program and fees as brand TLDs.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#194
You can never take a corporation at its word. If you relied on promises that you obtained (limits on price increases, etc) you should have gotten all of that language into a legally binding contract. Even if current management of Ethos is committed to what you say they promised, management changes, companies run into trouble, and future management may come under pressure to extract more revenue.

Also, what's the justification for 10% annual increases? Their costs aren't going up faster than inflation.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#195
post #111

> 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 reven…

1. The price cap is an informal agreement, not legally binding

2. The domain name market would probably not bear a 14000x increase.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#196
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…

I don't think that "nonprofit" = "good". See https://newint.org/features/2005/10/01/keynote/ we might be better off if Oxfam's domain name was sold off to somebody else. People who liked that "phenomenon of bullshit jobs" essay might think that "working for a nonprofit" is "meaningful", but people who work for non-profits frequently suffer from moral injury, get burned out, underpaid, and wind up questioning their va…

>Particularly in the developing world, people would benefit from for-profit organizations that are responsive to their needs as opposed to non-profits who work for rich donors and mindless governments.

If there was profit to be made there would an business filling that need.

A foodbank in Detroit or non profit school in Ethiopia for girls are there because business and the like aren't.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#197
post #55

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

#198
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…

I agree the author seems very naive and you're right to zone in on the only substantive thing he did say. However I'm still unclear about some points. For example can they sell oxfam.org from under Oxfam's nose? How does that work?

They can't "sell it from under their nose", they just can demand any renewal price for it they like, and delete the domain if that price is not being paid.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Well, they already only take bug reports from people who enter into a contract with Microsoft!?

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#200

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…

PIR is abandoning its nonprofit status anyways, to become B corporation instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry

They are becoming a company, but they haven't committed to become a B Corp. only to "explore" the certification. Like I "explore" using my phone less. ;)

Also becoming a B corp is different from getting the certification. the latter is just a reporting standard.

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