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Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

easydns.com

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Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#41

Post by ulkesh »

The real loser in this deal is us. Not only is trust lost (or already has been from other past DNS goings-on), but we, the registrants, end up paying more, financially and otherwise.

Generally speaking, the underpinnings of the Internet (protocols, certain levels of infrastructure) should always and forever be public, not-for-profit, "open-source", and not patentable, in order to protect the integrity of the system. I'm no expert, so maybe a lot of it is this way already, but DNS seems to be a bastion of for-profit greed.

All of this walks hand in hand with Net Neutrality, in my view -- governance to protect what is a fundamental human right, the free (as in freedom, and to some degree, as in beer) flow of information. And in an ideal world, objectively factual information.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#42

Post by TeMPOraL »

iudqnolq wrote: post #37
TeMPOraL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The field of economics, and pretty much all monetary transactions, are about demonstrating that sales (and thus wealth) are not a zero-sum game. Yes, a good chunk of them are really negative -sum games, once you include all secondary stakeholders in the calculations.

Care to expand on your one sentence dismissal of modern economics? Maybe a second sentence describing the means by which this happens, or an example, or even - gasp - a source?

It's not a dismissal of the field of economics, but of some of the popular businesses and business practices. The science of economics identifies the negative-sum games too. Keywords include, "tragedy of the commons", "externalities". Examples include AirBnB, tobacco companies, consumer IoT, advertising industry.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#43

Post by e2le »

emn13 wrote: post #36
e2le wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it was incorrect of me to claim that users don't notice domains. I suppose the issue I was getting at was users don't appear to memorize the domain and instead use Google or similar for finding the site they are looking for.

But how does google find those domains? Link juice still matters, and those links work via... domains.

Those links work with domains or addresses no matter if it's https://yourdomain.com/ or https://[2001::1]/. Google finds those domains through a variety of means (social media, collecting other domains from the sites they index, manually submitted domains, etc). Google also indexes addresses.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#44

Post by iudqnolq »

einpoklum wrote: post #40
iudqnolq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand on your one sentence dismissal of modern economics? Maybe a second sentence describing the means by which this happens, or an example, or even - gasp - a source?

If you've lived through the last US economic crisis you might not be that riled up about one-sentence dismissals of modern economics.

Why?

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#45

Post by iudqnolq »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #42
iudqnolq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand on your one sentence dismissal of modern economics? Maybe a second sentence describing the means by which this happens, or an example, or even - gasp - a source?

It's not a dismissal of the field of economics, but of some of the popular businesses and business practices. The science of economics identifies the negative-sum games too. Keywords include, "tragedy of the commons", "externalities". Examples include AirBnB, tobacco companies, consumer IoT, advertising industry.

I know what externalities are. Are you claiming the marginal social cost of everything is greater than the marginal social benefit?

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#46

Post by wmf »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #18

Can someone explain to me what actually operating a registry means? I have always assumed that it basically consists of maintaining a database replicated across a few authoritative servers and handling WOIS information but this can't possibly warrant $25M of yeary expenses.

One thing I noticed in PIR's annual report is abuse. They take down thousands of domains per year due to court orders and all of those need to be reviewed by lawyers. That could be millions of dollars a year.

You also need lots of lawyers just to keep up with what's going on in ICANN (which looks a lot like a full employment scheme for lawyers, lobbyists, and policy wonks). Then they spent over $1M on marketing. It adds up.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#47

Post by einpoklum »

jessaustin wrote: post #27
rnhmjoj wrote: post #18

Can someone explain to me what actually operating a registry means? I have always assumed that it basically consists of maintaining a database replicated across a few authoritative servers and handling WOIS information but this can't possibly warrant $25M of yeary expenses.

Administration can consume any amount of money, so long as it isn't getting in the way of the money coming in the door. Just look at universities in USA. They're not doing anything now they weren't doing in 1980, yet tuition inflation was 7% over for most of the period since then. Where did the money go? They hired more assistant administrators, to justify higher salaries for the top administrators. Also the perks ar…

I doubt even your numeric figure is exact; source?

Anyway, supposing that it is - how do you know that's where the money went? And - how do you know the money went mostly to the same place in most universities?

This sounds like a baseless generalization.

PS - I'm not from the US.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#48

Post by troquerre »

e2le wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #5

No, that's not why they did it. They did it because they thought they could get away with it. But the charter of ISOC never was to make a mint of the .org TLD by selling it, and as far as I'm concerned this deal will be reversed at some point or we should simply set up an alternative root and a pox on both their houses.

OpenNIC would be that alternative root although often are they at odds with ICANN creating new tlds that conflict with their own. It seems like the DNS system in it's current form is broken and I'm not convinced an alternative root is the solution but perhaps part of one.

Handshake.org is trying to create an alternative root that is better (along the dimensions of security and governance) than the current system. I can see it gaining adoption especially in light of recent events.

Re: Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs

#50

Post by troquerre »

ulkesh wrote: post #41

The real loser in this deal is us. Not only is trust lost (or already has been from other past DNS goings-on), but we, the registrants, end up paying more, financially and otherwise. Generally speaking, the underpinnings of the Internet (protocols, certain levels of infrastructure) should always and forever be public, not-for-profit, "open-source", and not patentable, in order to protect the integrity of the system.…

Agreed. IMO no organization should be able to collect rent on what’s basically public infrastructure at this point.
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