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The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

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Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#71

Post by logifail »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #31
TomMckenny wrote: post #27

Honest question: since .org is relied on world wide, why are just two US state courts the only ones with the legal power to review the sale?

You've got the causality backwards. It isn't "the whole word uses this, so we decided to put two US state courts in charge of it". It was "only two US state courts are in charge of it but the whole world decided to start using it anyway". No one forced anyone to use the US DNS system. They all knew what they were signing up for when they joined the public internet in the 80s and 90s and haven't spend any time or mone…

> They all knew what they were signing up [..]

Really? Knew as in "ticked a box" or as in "informed consent"?

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#72

Post by onion2k »

lancewiggs wrote: post #47
Scoundreller wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. A p/e of 20 isn't bad. S̶t̶o̶c̶k̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶1̶5̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶f̶i̶e̶d̶.̶ Oops, stock market is 20-25 right now. There's so many TLDs today, the ability to raise prices isn't what it was. Though they could 5x prices and even if they lost 60% of their business, they'll come out ahead. I could understand the worries of .org holders.

.org is .org, and they have a lot more pricing power than almost all of the gTLDs (generic top level domains). Their customers, if you think about it, are perhaps more likely to value what the domain stands for. Meanwhile the annual price is currently absolutely trivial versus the expenses of most organisations from higher GDP countries.

Their customers, if you think about it, are perhaps more likely to value what the domain stands for.

Some of their customers perhaps. If you go back and look at what companies were doing with domains 20 years ago most medium and large enterprises bought .com, .org, .net and some country code tld domain because that's what everyone recommended "in case someone cybersquatted". I think behaviour has stopped now there are hundreds of gTLDs available. Consequently .org is much less likely to sell to businesses, and will find it very difficult to grow.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#73

Post by logifail »

kick wrote: post #29
TomMckenny wrote: post #27

Honest question: since .org is relied on world wide, why are just two US state courts the only ones with the legal power to review the sale?

Why would anywhere else have legal power to? .org doesn't sell domains directly to consumers, and ICANN is intentionally centralized, up until a few years ago being owned by the US government. US-owned US-created top-level domains are hardly an international affair. You could argue that DNS is broken, and that ICANN is bad, but there's no legal argument for .org being subject to foreign governments.

> US-owned US-created top-level domains are hardly an international affair

We'll see your "US-owned, US-created" and raise you Margrethe Vestager.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#75

Post by filleokus »

beiz wrote: post #63
kick wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anywhere else have legal power to? .org doesn't sell domains directly to consumers, and ICANN is intentionally centralized, up until a few years ago being owned by the US government. US-owned US-created top-level domains are hardly an international affair. You could argue that DNS is broken, and that ICANN is bad, but there's no legal argument for .org being subject to foreign governments.

thats a very US-centric view. not everything is monetary, certain things are simply setup with intent of management and responsibility in a global world. DNS is one of those things, GPS another. do note that neither of these are exclusively owned by the US, but rather that the US owns the responsibility to maintain these services that we all use. even the dollar as reserve is a fickle thing that could change if the r…

Other commenters have pointed out the flaw in your argument about DNS, but GPS, how can't you consider that as being exclusively owned by the US?

It's not like with domain names where some bytes are floating around in networks and it's easiest if we all use the US addressing system.

There are ≈ 40 hunks of metals up in space with extremely precise clocks, _completely_ essential to the functioning of the GPS system, owned by the US, sent into space by the US.

Just because we leech on their satellites doesn't lower the "exclusivity" of the ownership by the US. Which is also probably why all the other big players (Russia/China/EU) are doing their own GNSS.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#76

Post by deepaksurti »

lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wrote about this too - linked in the article. https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o... The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million/year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m/year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion. As any r/personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a ma…

>> is to spend a maximum of 4% of your assets each year.

OT. Isn't 4% also the rule of early retirement, that is if you can live of 4% of your savings you can retire?

Can anyone clarify if this rule applies for both individual and corporate? If so, how would be even more interesting to know?

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#77

Post by ohashi »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #60
cameldrv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest. The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest. ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for regi…

Further, the sale of the asset to a third party is essentially laundering the extraction of maximum value. The buyer pays the NPV when operated as a profit focused enterprise, then insulates the ISOC from blowback when it actually does this. The ISOC can then turn around and feign betrayal with the rest of us, its pockets full of money.

This is the internet. We don't forget things like this. People's names have been attached to it, like Andrew Sullivan (CEO) and Richard Barnes (board member defending it). We know exactly who fucked over everyone here, they admit it publicly. There's no pretending about it, Andrew was more than happy to sell out the non profit space. Just read the interview: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/isoc_ceo_dot_org_sa...

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#78

Post by ohashi »

cryptonector wrote: post #62
cameldrv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest. The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest. ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for regi…

Operating .org in the public interest in the past doesn't mean that it has zero value today. "The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows" not so much that "[ISOC is] operating it in the interest of the ISOC" but that PIR may not be interested in operating .org in the public interest. How is ISOC a dubious charity?

Someone dug into their expenses, 69% overhead. https://twitter.com/ferdeline/status/1199380702233612288

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#79

Post by ohashi »

mlyle wrote: post #37
metasj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks -- you're right, the second is prohibited; corrected. The first seems fine per 2.10(c) as long as the registrant agrees on first registration that renewals will be expensive.

Registrant can negotiate with ICANN to make their own terms at expiration of the agreement.

ICANN has no spine and is captured, so it probably will happen. And now with .ORG doing this, we're going to see .COM next.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#80

Post by tinus_hn »

lazyguy2 wrote: post #39

The reason it sold at half it's valuation is because the valuation was bullshit. It's like some guy claiming his classic car is worth 25,000 dollars. If nobody is offering 25k for it then it's not worth 25k. Period, end of story.

The deal was closed in two days with no other offers allowed.
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