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

blogs.harvard.edu

81–90 of 189 posts

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

#81

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…

ICANN was supposed to be a multi stakeholder organization that would balance non US interests. In reality, it's entirely captured by registry interests and the result is former CEO capturing .ORG and turning into a for profit. ICANN is a failure is the core problem.

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

#84
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you know what ISOC does? It's a non-profit, yes, but it's not a charity. It exists to make things like the IETF and IRTF, and related administrative groups run. That's it. Of course its expenses are going to be mostly overhead -- what else would they be given their mission?

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

#85

"Sullivan suggested that their goal is to return roughly the same annual revenue as they have been getting from PIR — around $50M. Of course this time it would come without the possibility of expanding the underlying business year by year." This hurts my head. Needless to say, the returns on this fund will be _far_ less assured than the returns on simply maintaining the .org business as it was (especially with Goldma…

Waiting to hear who are ISOC gets new gigs in the Ethos orbit.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>but that PIR may not be interested in operating .org in the public interest. Oh who did this organization with a duty to steward .org for public interest sell it to? How can you separate that duty from the action of selling it to a third party without that duty? It's an interesting hair to split.

That's fair, but it's not proof that ISOC wasn't running .org in the public interest, only that if they had been, they stopped when they sold it to a party that looks set not to. "They were so good right until the point where they stopped being so good."

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

#87

Is there a benefit to locking in pricing today for say 10 years? I assume the major registries, such as namecheap and godaddy, will allow a longer term buy in?

Another way to look at it - is there a downside to locking in the current price for 10 years? It doesn't _seem_ if Ethos do end up with it that the prices will go anywhere but up. I renewed my .org for 10 years.

You are supporting a broken system. Chances are it won't get fixed. The better option may be to support a new, decentralized name system instead.

I'm hoping this incident will provide new energy to these efforts.

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

#88
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They buy trillions of bonds from GSEs every day. This wouldn't be any different. Agency debt is a well understood thing.

Thanks. I find this topic fascinating, even though I know nothing about it. Do you have any recommendations for reading material to learn more?

You might try (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/corporatebond.asp) for an overview.

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

#90

Is there a benefit to locking in pricing today for say 10 years? I assume the major registries, such as namecheap and godaddy, will allow a longer term buy in?

Another way to look at it - is there a downside to locking in the current price for 10 years? It doesn't _seem_ if Ethos do end up with it that the prices will go anywhere but up. I renewed my .org for 10 years.

After 10 more years of using it you're going to be even more locked in.
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