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Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

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Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#221

Post by ben509 »

souterrain wrote: post #48

> The Internet Society does great work protecting the Internet and bringing it to the people who need it most — work that is way more impactful than leasing domain names. This transaction secures that work's future and independence. Is “lease” the understanding others have regarding the relationship among a registrar and registrant? Isn’t the registrar intended to operate the supporting infrastructure and no more? Wh…

You could own your name outright if you could take sole responsibility[1] for resolving disputes. Basically, we'd have to have some scheme where everyone can advertise which names they own, and then you'd negotiate directly with DNS operators to convince them that your advertisment takes precedence over someone else's.

So it could be done, it might even be a better scheme, but I think it would be expensive and messy.

[1]: You could obviously pay someone to negotiate on your behalf, but you're still initiating the action.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#225

Post by jagged-chisel »

zrm wrote: post #201
ptest1 wrote: post #107

I don’t understand how this “sale” is legal in the first place. PIR is a legal 501(c)3 nonprofit. You can’t really sell a nonprofit to a for-profit company except in unusual and rare circumstances. In California, I know you need a letter from the state Attorney General to do so. There are also federal restrictions on sales like this, particularly around self-dealing transactions. This transaction was obviously self d…

Not only that, isn't there a sense in which a TLD is not actually property at all? The DNS operates by consensus. There are a bunch of root server operators who all agree who operates the .org TLD and then list those NS records in their root servers. What stops people from getting together, agreeing that a private equity firm would be a poor steward of the .org TLD, choosing somebody else to operate it instead, and p…

Who owns the root DNS servers? Can those owners be convinced to stage such a coup? If not 100%, then you have forked a TLD.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#226

Post by zrm »

wwweston wrote: post #204
zrm wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, isn't there a sense in which a TLD is not actually property at all? The DNS operates by consensus. There are a bunch of root server operators who all agree who operates the .org TLD and then list those NS records in their root servers. What stops people from getting together, agreeing that a private equity firm would be a poor steward of the .org TLD, choosing somebody else to operate it instead, and p…

It’s correct enough to say that DNS is an application of consensus, but rather than considering that a distinction vs property, one might consider asking themselves in what sense property itself isn’t consensus.

Property is not based on consensus. Even if millions of people think Jeff Bezos has too much money, with nowhere near consensus that he should have it, a court will still convict anybody who tries to take his stuff.

The DNS really does operate on consensus. There is nobody forcing everybody to do it a particular way. We get real consensus because everybody has a strong interest in not creating global namespace conflicts through forks. But that doesn't mean you can't make a change to fix a mistake, it only means you need to get enough support behind it for it to become the consensus position.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#227

Post by rasz »

driverdan wrote: post #179

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…

Up next "We are excited to announce Cisco acquisition of Let's Encrypt".

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#228

Post by zrm »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #225
zrm wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, isn't there a sense in which a TLD is not actually property at all? The DNS operates by consensus. There are a bunch of root server operators who all agree who operates the .org TLD and then list those NS records in their root servers. What stops people from getting together, agreeing that a private equity firm would be a poor steward of the .org TLD, choosing somebody else to operate it instead, and p…

Who owns the root DNS servers? Can those owners be convinced to stage such a coup? If not 100%, then you have forked a TLD.

It takes two to tango. Once you get majority support then the holdouts are the ones forking the TLD, and since forks are not in anybody's interest a consensus would be reached.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#229

Post by stefan_ »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #102

For all the good you've done in the past and now, Richard, this is just one long disappointing read. Between the lines, the text is "we don't have the people to maintain PIR and decided that rather than hire people for it, we should sell it" and then a for-profit shell was set up and PIR was funneled over to it, and now it's no longer your problem to have to deal with. From your perspective, that's not making things…

For PIR, an organization that literally does nothing but collect money as it has outsourced all of its principal obligations, they sure have a hugely inflated wage bill at an easy 5 million a year, for a ton of various directors and VPs.

If anything, this has been a good wakeup call that fees for .org could and should be slashed by some 80%.

Re: Why I Voted to Sell .ORG

#230

Post by munk-a »

ben509 wrote: post #202
munk-a wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can't be laid out in a binding contract because it's a new contract each time you renew the name. This is something every renter has dealt with since forever. So, yes, they could absolutely start trying to shake down the biggest non-profit organizations. Those are also organizations that are highly sympathetic and have literally hundreds of millions of viewers, and thus immense political clout.

It could be laid out in a binding contract for the purchase of .org that the PE firm is prevented from reoffering a name renewal above the rate they previously offered it and the agreed adjustment - it just appears that isn't actually contractually laid out anywhere and is simply a PR statement.

Contract law certainly isn't something to trivially walk into, but there are ways this could have been done.

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