Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blogs.harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 189 posts

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

#151

Post by dropmann »

zrm wrote: post #132
tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extend your domain lease by 10 years at the current yearly fee. Gives you some time to migrate if you choose to.

That's a bad deal unless you actually need ten years to migrate, which you probably don't. Better off to take a year or three at the 10% annual increase and then stop paying entirely (~364% of the existing rate for three years, with payments made in the future rather than the present) than to pay 1000% of the existing rate right now.

10 years is a long time, maybe until than its bought back to non-profit, you never know. Also it allows you the luxury of starting worrying about your migration later. If you could invest that money now with more than 4-5 times US interest rates (which is the price increase I would expect), then I would consider this a bad deal.

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

#152

Post by kick »

logifail wrote: post #73
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.

> 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.

Vestager has zero power over this. ICANN's European employees are negligible, and ICANN discontinuing services to Europe immediately brings Europe's infrastructure down. Europeans legislators should really accept that they fucked themselves on this, because they could start taking preventative measures. They won't, though.

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

#154

Post by schoen »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #143
schoen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The reason that I mentioned the distinction was that you suggested contacting DAs in response to romaaeterna's prediction that "we're going to see Federal scrutiny". Contacting DAs might be the most appropriate way to handle a problem, but in itself it probably won't lead to Federal scrutiny of that problem.

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

#155

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

hollerith wrote: post #147
zrm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> he phone system lacked human-readable names and yet was extremely popular with non-technical users.

First of all, phone numbers were pretty short, and were chunked and thus pretty easy for humans to memorize. Do you think the average human will be able to memorize a bunch of onion addresses?

Second, even with phone numbers, companies used the corresponding characters to the digits to create human readable names, for example 1-800-FLOWERS

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

#156

Post by lancewiggs »

LegitShady wrote: post #64
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…

I feel like you're missing some capital recovery factors and alternatives analysis to be so strong with your statement.

It’s a pretty simple analysis - but there is clearly, to me, enormous value left on the table.

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

#157

Post by TheRealPomax »

schoen wrote: post #154
TheRealPomax wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The reason that I mentioned the distinction was that you suggested contacting DAs in response to romaaeterna's prediction that "we're going to see Federal scrutiny". Contacting DAs might be the most appropriate way to handle a problem, but in itself it probably won't lead to Federal scrutiny of that problem.

Unless you found a loophole that allows the federal government to even form an opinion on this matter before it reaches federal courts, a non-profit selling its asset is a matter of state law first, and transgressions or questionable ethics are a matter of state investigation, not federal.

As insane as that might seem for something as far-reaching as "the ownership of the .org top level domain".

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

#158

Post by beiz »

filleokus wrote: post #75
beiz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, o…

because as you say, everyone has the ability to switch away from US control if the US abuse it; which is happening - or rather, corporations abuse it and politicians aren't doing their job by stepping in to stop them. politics is like any other relationship; you have to give, receive, and compromise. if you don't, you risk alienating your allies and lose your relationship.

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

#159

Post by wpietri »

gowld wrote: post #136
wpietri wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break-even pricing was my first thought, too. But I think the .org registry has to be priced at least modestly higher than business-y domains (e.g., .com), because otherwise you'll find people using it for all sorts of for-profit stuff, reducing its signalling value. But there's no reason that money can't go right back into basic infrastructure. For example, after the Heartbleed bug we learned that OpenSSL was receiv…

Why does "signalling value" matter at all? If a business gets value by masquerading as an "org", then that value is sure worth more than $10 or whatever, and surely the commercial entities are better able to pay than non-profit orgs, so making org cost more only hurts orgs, not businesses.

Depends on which business. You're correct for businesses who invest heavily in their brand and have just one domain. But you're very wrong for businesses that have a lot of domains and use the domain for credibility. E.g., spammers, typo-squatters, fraudsters, fly-by-night retailers, etc. And it's those that will really bring down the value of the TLD.

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

#160

Post by beiz »

kick wrote: post #66
beiz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

DNS is one of those things, False. do note that neither of these are exclusively owned by the US, False. but rather that the US owns the responsibility to maintain these services that we all use. False. The US has no responsibility, they own it. even the dollar as reserve is a fickle thing that could change if the rest of us choose to. And until other countries choose to, they get to deal with the consequences of the…

> False. False. False. The US has no responsibility, they own it.

They own it and share it, they get control and everyone else gets a service, the moment they abuse their control, everyone else will stop their dependence on it. that means they have a responsibility to keep this balance or lose control of it.

> Good luck, there's plenty of software in Europe with hardcoded URLs, and there's no chance of getting operating systems in Europe, which are contributed to almost exclusively by US companies, to switch their DNS over to something that isn't ICANN-controlled.

legacy systems are mainly an issues for hospitals, and if necessary, the governments (who pays for these hospitals anyway) would afford a switch. the US is more vulnerable for something like this since their hospitals are private.

> The US has performed coups on foreign countries at least a dozen times. Other countries won't do a thing, as is shown by historical precedent.

the US performs coups in third-world countries struggling with stability. they have never attempted a coup in a well organized country with strong ties.

> Neither of those run their own DNS, they leech off of ICANN, and occasionally block things or modify records. Were ICANN to disappear, both would be in disarray.

both of these are building their own as we speak. for the very reason we're having this argument.

Post reply on HN