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Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

drewdevault.com

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Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#11

Post by criddell »

ben509 wrote: post #5

> The level of corruption on display by the three organizations involved in this scam: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ISOC (The Internet Society), and PIR (Public Interest Registry), is astounding and very illegal. If these organizations are so corrupt, then them selling .org simply demonstrates that they're too corrupt to manage it. We can't simply reverse this, you're just handing it b…

Great point. If you click through to savedotorg.org they say this:

> We cannot afford to put them into the hands of a private equity firm that has not earned the trust of the NGO community.

The private equity firm hasn't earned the trust of the NGO community and the current caretakers have lost the trust of the NGO community. So what now?

So why not let them sell it and then found .ngo (or something like that).

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#13

Post by pge »

While I don't agree with the sale of the .org to a for-profit entity, I believe the premise of this objection is not tenable. From what I can glean, while PIR is a non-profit, it was not a non-stock company (non-profits are often, but not always non-stock companies, meaning they have no shareholders). Were it a non-stock company, it would be impossible for it to be acquired for any material compensation, because there are no shareholders from whom to buy the company. In this case, however, it appears that PIR was a wholly-owned subsidiary of ISOC (ie. a stock corporation with a single shareholder). As such, it is an asset of ISOC and can be sold by ISOC legally. A non-profit is allowed to sell its assets, so long as it does so at fair market value, and the value received remains on the balance sheet of the non-profit (i.e. proceeds cannot be distributed to any kind of shareholders). As long as ISOC retains the $1B it received and continues to use it to further the mission that it was given non-profit status to pursue, such a transaction is perfectly legal.

(I'm not a lawyer but have been involved in the creation and certification of multiple non-profits, including in Va. where PIR was formed, and have been party to asset sales from non-profits.)

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#14

Post by ghjyui »

toyg wrote: post #3

Looks like Russian-style "privatization" has finally come to America!

It's the opposite. Iirc, icann was a semi gov entity and everybody complained that the internet is effectively controlled by the US gov via ICANN. So the gov decided to yield and give ICANN freedom. Sure enough, icann was quickly captured by pirates.

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#15

Post by xur17 »

ben509 wrote: post #5

> The level of corruption on display by the three organizations involved in this scam: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ISOC (The Internet Society), and PIR (Public Interest Registry), is astounding and very illegal. If these organizations are so corrupt, then them selling .org simply demonstrates that they're too corrupt to manage it. We can't simply reverse this, you're just handing it b…

To me the fundamental problem is that someone has to own the tld itself.

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#16

Post by ghjyui »

irq-1 wrote: post #12

Can FAANGish companies setup an alternative root for .org? We would all prefer a technical solution, but we don't have one today.

No. For example, I have a .org email domain. In order to make this work, everybody involved, that is dns, email hoster and various dbs, ssl certs infra, browsers and email apps, they all need to properly resolve my .org domain. It's unrealistic to expect all these parties to suddenly respect the new dns resolver.

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#17

Post by dpau »

xur17 wrote: post #15
ben509 wrote: post #5

> The level of corruption on display by the three organizations involved in this scam: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ISOC (The Internet Society), and PIR (Public Interest Registry), is astounding and very illegal. If these organizations are so corrupt, then them selling .org simply demonstrates that they're too corrupt to manage it. We can't simply reverse this, you're just handing it b…

To me the fundamental problem is that someone has to own the tld itself.

a non-profit consortium consisting of .org stakeholders could be a start

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#18

Post by aaomidi »

shantly wrote: post #8

Seems like the most likely route to success would be for a few big internet companies to set up a .org nonprofit and treat it as the authority, ignoring icann. Fork the tld, in other words.

This is essentially impossible though.

It sounds good but I don't see most ISPs caring.

Re: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet

#20

Post by ptest1 »

pge wrote: post #13

While I don't agree with the sale of the .org to a for-profit entity, I believe the premise of this objection is not tenable. From what I can glean, while PIR is a non-profit, it was not a non-stock company (non-profits are often, but not always non-stock companies, meaning they have no shareholders). Were it a non-stock company, it would be impossible for it to be acquired for any material compensation, because ther…

(I also work in the nonprofit space)

In this case, ISOC should almost certainly lose their 501(c)3 status, as the transaction is unrelated business income, and may or may not have been sold at fair market value (I don’t believe it was). In either of these cases, the penalty is at minimum the removal of their 501(c)3 status.

I believe they may be preempting this by converting themselves to a “B Corp.”

The case of ICANN is more interesting. I believe they knew what was going on here, and facilitated this transaction to their former CEO. In this case, the IRS has good reason to revoke ICANN’s 501(c)3 status, as this transaction was self-dealing.

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