The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by beiz » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #103

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…

You were doing well until you dragged GPS and the dollar into the argument. Those are US assets and the US are free to dispose of them as they see fit, no ifs or buts. The rest of the world chooses to piggyback on them because why not, but everybody knows US military and economic requirements will always come first on those platforms. What you should have brought up, really, is the UN. The US pays for most of what is…

> Those are US assets and the US are free to...

GPS is a derivative of Håkan Lans AIS. The US military built the satellite network yes, but had they not shared it, another network would have been constructed to take its place as the technology itself is not American.

I fully agree with you though, the UN exist to host these projects as a non-partial entity. The fact that they don't is cause for some frustration and a risk to the world.

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

#162

Post by beiz » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65

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…

> 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 For all practical purposes, these systems are owned by the U.S. because America maintains them. That lets the U.S. government cut it off to unfriendly users, the definition of control.

They are allowed to own and maintain and control these systems. No one is forced to use them, and if the US abuse it, they lose the control they currently are allowed to possess.

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

#163

Post by cgiles » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #100

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…

> even the dollar as reserve is a fickle thing that could change if the rest of us choose to. No, you have this all backwards. Let's take a hypothetical country -- Fredonia with it's Fredonian Franc. The government of Fredonia decides "I want to be a global reserve currency!". How would they go about accomplishing that? First, let's define what it means to be a global reserve currency. What it means is that other res…

Absolutely fascinating. I never thought about it this way.

This would also imply that the Fredonian government would be highly incentivized to run at a constant deficit, more so than other governments, because its cost of capital would be lower.

Your argument is so convincing that I am having a hard time seeing what the US gets out of all this. Cheaper capital and cheaper imports, I suppose. But surely there is a reason for this besides American altruism.

But if the US ever gets tired of this, why would it start capital controls? Why not just inflate the currency?

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

#164

Post by beiz » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #100

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…

> even the dollar as reserve is a fickle thing that could change if the rest of us choose to. No, you have this all backwards. Let's take a hypothetical country -- Fredonia with it's Fredonian Franc. The government of Fredonia decides "I want to be a global reserve currency!". How would they go about accomplishing that? First, let's define what it means to be a global reserve currency. What it means is that other res…

the whole war in the middle east has been because the euro was about to become the new reserve currency, everyone, including china, was on board of this move - everyone, except the US. this is after the fact that nixon burned all of europe's gold in the vietnam war, the gold, which was supposed to balance the dollar. so yes, the current fallback is the US bonds but it isn't stable and the only reason the US maintains this system is because they fucked up.

so yeah, i don't buy it. the US isn't 'saving the world' by holding the dollar as a reserve. the entire US economy is hanging on by a thread and would collapse if they lose the global trade commission on dollar.

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

#165

Post by beiz » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

cgiles wrote: post #163

rsj_hn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even the dollar as reserve is a fickle thing that could change if the rest of us choose to. No, you have this all backwards. Let's take a hypothetical country -- Fredonia with it's Fredonian Franc. The government of Fredonia decides "I want to be a global reserve currency!". How would they go about accomplishing that? First, let's define what it means to be a global reserve currency. What it means is that other res…

Absolutely fascinating. I never thought about it this way. This would also imply that the Fredonian government would be highly incentivized to run at a constant deficit, more so than other governments, because its cost of capital would be lower. Your argument is so convincing that I am having a hard time seeing what the US gets out of all this. Cheaper capital and cheaper imports, I suppose. But surely there is a rea…

they already inflate it. all currency is currently regulated by the banks and value is purely artificial. you can thank the UK housing bubble. the banks realized digital currency is great because its not regulated, and created money out of thin air and lent it couples buying houses and any money they got back they counted as profits. this is why the economy crashed in 2008 - the globe realized there was nothing carrying value but the banks artificially maintaining value of currency.

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

#166

Post by kerkeslager » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

For all the people who keep saying there's no application for blockchain: here's one. Namecoin was a bad implementation, but the concept is sound.

Letting companies control domain names serves no purpose. They don't prevent domain squatters, they've censored on behalf of governments in the past, and now they're allowed to gouge nonprofits on .org domains.

A decentralized domain name system wouldn't solve all these problems, but at least we wouldn't be paying rent-seeking middle-men to provide terrible service.

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

#167

Post by markman » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

I'm probably going to regret asking this and I apologize for my ignorance but I thought .org's were all government and nonprofit. I didn't think anybody owned it nor that the entire domain could be sold?!

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

#168

Post by soraminazuki » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 12:04 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #150

soraminazuki wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Endorsement by browser makers is not enough, because browsers are far from the only software that uses the internet. We would need to rewrite every single one of these software to successfully make the transition. In an ideal world where legacy software don't exist and people would rewrite their software to adjust to new standards overnight, yes it might work but that's just not the way things are. Worse, things would break badly when we have different software using conflicting naming systems. I'm pretty sure nobody would want to spend time debugging that kind of mess.

Now, even if browser support is all we need (it's not), how can we possibly explain this to users? Many, many links, bookmarks, and URLs would break along the way, causing confusion and harm.

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

#169

Post by icedchai » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 12:35 AM UTC

f4ewagy34aew wrote: post #120

apexalpha wrote: post #115

I still can't really believe someone can sell a building block of the world wide web like .org tld. Who runs .net? .com? .edu? .info? Can they be sold, too?

Yes all of those are private now. .com is still with ICANN (which is now an NGO), .net is now VeriSign, .edu is Educause NGO, .info is Afilias (coop formed by several independent domain registrars)

.COM's registry is Verisign, just like .NET.

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

#170

Post by LegitShady » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #86

LegitShady wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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."

>but it's not proof that ISOC wasn't running .org in the public interest, only that if they had been, they stopped

The action selling it to another org without that duty is abdication of that duty and they should not have had authority to sell it.

The specific circumstances only make it worse.