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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

#141

Post by zrm »

dependenttypes wrote: post #101

This is a good chance to stop our dependence on DNS and move to things such as .onion domains instead (which by the way help avoid the whole certificate CA mess).

> This is a good chance to stop our dependence on DNS and move to things such as .onion domains instead (which by the way help avoid the whole certificate CA mess).

.onion isn't a direct competitor for DNS. It does some of the things DNS does (e.g. a consistent identifier that sticks even if your IP address changes), and even does some things DNS doesn't (e.g. encrypted transport), but the names aren't human-readable. And it compromises the security if you try to pretend that they are by generating pretty keys, because the random junk on the end there is important.

Namecoin, on the other hand, is a direct competitor for DNS.

However, DNS itself is pretty well federated. You're at the mercy of the TLD operator, but that only means you need to be careful to choose a trustworthy one. On the other hand, if you had asked last year which of the TLD operators would be the least likely to screw you over, a lot of people would have said .org, so... maybe there is something to this whole cryptographic trust thing.

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

#142

Post by xtiansimon »

MrEldritch wrote: post #117
ohashi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_s…

This is the Internet. Everyone will have forgotten this besides, like, five people before this time 2020.

I’ll have a reminder each time the website I created for volunteers helping a non-profit is up for renewal.

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

#143

Post by TheRealPomax »

schoen wrote: post #67
TheRealPomax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we won't. Not unless you help set that in motion. Have you contacted the DA already?

Note that in the U.S., district attorneys are normally the prosecutors at the state court level. At the Federal level, most prosecutors are "U.S. attorneys" or "assistant U.S. attorneys". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_attorney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney

Right, so: the DA. Because as incredible as this is: neither ICANN nor ISOC are controlled or run by the federal government.

As much as people think that the organization that oversees internet naming must be federal (because how could it not be, they control stuff for the ENTIRE COUNTRY AND BEYOND), both ICANN and ISOC are literally just private industry non-profit organisations, like any other 501c3. If you want to sue them, or you want them sued by government, you're going to have to contact the DA for the state(s) they are registered in.

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

#144

Post by Joeri »

evross wrote: post #126
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…

It's worth noting that the former ICANN CEO, Fadi Chehadé is highly involved in this sale. This timeline also seems to suggest that current members of ICANN are also biased towards the sale of the .org domain, ICANN may not be interested in the views of the people who currently have .org domains. From https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-... . : "March 2019: ICANN receives 3,300 comments unifor…

So basically ICANN itself is corrupt and must be replaced wholesale with a proper public interest steward?

Maybe people are protesting the wrong thing. The sale of .org is a symptom, the underlying cause is a bad regulatory framework for internet names.

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

#145

Post by cryptonector »

gowld wrote: post #137
cryptonector wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"mission-related" work is a separate category from "staff travel" aka vacations.

The staff travels because they host conferences around the world several times a year. Conferences I've attended many times, and which are more than full work days for the attendees and the staff. Typically a day at an IETF meeting starts at 9AM, officially ends at 5PM, but then side meetings, bar BoFs, impromptu hackathons, and so on, will take you to near midnight almost every day -- it's exhausting (the staff probably doesn't work such long days, but ISOC officers probably do). There is no time left for sight-seeing, except maybe on the one night where there is a social event.

They host conferences around the world because attendees to the conferences in question are from around the world, and because ISOC wants to attract more of them.

I'm prepared to listen to real arguments about why ISOC sucks. But yours are either uninformed or you're not explaining them well enough. My bet is on the former. ISOC is not a charity, just a non-profit, and they've done quite well at keeping the IETF/IRTF and related groups going for decades.

Another thing you need to understand is that most SDOs (standards developing organizations) are pay-to-play. ANSI, OASIS, IEEE, Unicode Consortium, ... -- all pay-to-play. IETF? Free to participate. You don't even have to go to the meetings. Sure, participation == time == money, but being so accessible is a wonderful thing, and it takes an ISOC to keep it so.

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

#146

Post by jorvi »

kick wrote: post #50
jorvi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN downvotes can be rather confounding still. Check here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21653015 I responded very matter-of-fact, pointing out that the sharp edges of Tesla's cybertruck are something that makes it more dangerous to pedestrians. I didn't add any flourish or snark or whatever and yet it went into the grey. That kind of voting behavior just gives me a giant question mark.. why would anyone be hos…

Your answer was an answer to a question that wasn't being asked, and one that was obvious, at that. It seems reasonable that it was downmodded. IMO any site with a voting system should attach a heavy cost to downvoting: I think 'dang has already elaborated as to why this is a bad idea, but: Hacker News depends on downmods for community moderation. Discouraging them would lower the quality of the site. 3. the more dow…

> Your answer was an answer to a question that wasn't being asked, and one that was obvious, at that. It seems reasonable that it was downmodded.

> "Are trucks more likely to hit pedestrians? I was not aware of big vehicles being more dangerous."

Its pretty blindingly obvious what I answered.

> Hacker News depends on downmods for community moderation. Discouraging them would lower the quality of the site.

But attacking facts literally lowers the quality of the site

> Not to assume bad-faith, but this was a joke, wasn't it? A bad comment should be downmodded more, and users should not be penalized for that. Flagging, too, should happen if it's extremely bad.

And yet you also want to prevent echo chambers. So many people just blindly ram the downvote button on a grey comment. Or a comment that goes against one of the big names on HN, even if that comment is right.

Your responses to 2. and 3. (and 1. too) basically all come down to "downvoting is amazing, we need more of it!"

I don't really know how to respond to that. Are you completely oblivious to echo chamber effects..?

Edit: the fact that you downvoted this immediately only strengthens my point, dude.

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

#147

Post by hollerith »

zrm wrote: post #141
dependenttypes wrote: post #101

This is a good chance to stop our dependence on DNS and move to things such as .onion domains instead (which by the way help avoid the whole certificate CA mess).

> This is a good chance to stop our dependence on DNS and move to things such as .onion domains instead (which by the way help avoid the whole certificate CA mess). .onion isn't a direct competitor for DNS. It does some of the things DNS does (e.g. a consistent identifier that sticks even if your IP address changes), and even does some things DNS doesn't (e.g. encrypted transport), but the names aren't human-readable…

>but the names aren't human-readable

For many decades (before smartphones) the phone system lacked human-readable names and yet was extremely popular with non-technical users. Similarly, most web sites probably do not benefit much or at all from a human-readable name.

A bigger problem with .onion is probably the fact it is accessible only via a system (Tor) that has significantly longer response time than a standard web site tends to have.

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

#149

Post by dropmann »

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…

That is because most people found it appealing to have _one_ internet (read as domain name system). So the only option is to use the existing one. Given that, there was not really a choice.

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

#150

Post by Tepix »

soraminazuki wrote: post #98
Tepix wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The whole reason people are upset about this deal is because it's not possible to just "switch" to an alternative name system without breaking the whole internet. What you're suggesting is unrealistic.

Is it? All it takes initially is support by the browser makers.
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