The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org • Hacker News Board

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#11

Post by dr_dshiv » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

Can someone explain the issue? Currently, anyone can buy a .org. I imagine that this company will charge more money for .orgs in exchange for some verification procedure. Compare this to today, where anyone can buy .orgs for any reason: it might be a public good if there is some authentication and prestige.

NGOs and non-profits have money. Paying $100 a year to maintain a verified "I'm not a company" status might be a good idea. Keep in mind that non profits aren't necessarily good -- many are essentially tax shelters.

This article feels anti-capitalist. Nothing in the article makes a principled argument for how .orgs should operate. What's the argument for allowing anyone to buy a .org for $10 per year?

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#12

Post by brandon272 » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

Something has gone seriously wrong when one of our original TLDs, which, from my perspective, should be considered sacrosanct elements of the internet with historical importance, are able to be sold off by interloping individuals, who, for some bizarre reason, feel that they are entitled to capitalize on these TLDs, and who do so purely with their own self-interest at heart.

I'm really just disappointed and angered that this happened.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#13

Post by oaiey » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #11

Can someone explain the issue? Currently, anyone can buy a .org. I imagine that this company will charge more money for .orgs in exchange for some verification procedure. Compare this to today, where anyone can buy .orgs for any reason: it might be a public good if there is some authentication and prestige. NGOs and non-profits have money. Paying $100 a year to maintain a verified "I'm not a company" status might be…

The UNHCR or another huge entity will not give a shit. They have a legal department which can end Ethos Capital if they like.

However, the reading club with 20 members and yearly income of 300€ cannot afford a 100€ .org.

.org and the PIR had a dedicated purpose.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#14

Post by byuu » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

iameli wrote: post #4

> Verisign controls the registries for .com and .net, two of the internet’s most popular. All it does is administer a database and collect small sums from website owners, but with computing power rising and practically no marginal cost to adding another website to the database, the entire enterprise is a license to print money. In the third quarter of 2019, Verisign showed operating income of $205.6 million on $308.4…

The problem is you can't move a domain once you've established it. I'm stuck on byuu.org for life. There's 15 years worth of links to it scattered across the web that would all go dark. Or more precisely, that would all suddenly point at spam. I could never get most of them updated.

Even my subdomain from my previous host from 15 years ago is squatted to this day to serve up advertising. It's even aware of the software that I used to host there.

One answer in my view is to remove the maximum length of prepayment for domains. Let us buy a domain for 100 years. Sure, that's $1,000. Maybe throw in a discount. But now we never have to worry about it again, as long as we live. Or at least, as long as the registry lives. It would never be squattable.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#15

Post by dorfsmay » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

iameli wrote: post #4

> Verisign controls the registries for .com and .net, two of the internet’s most popular. All it does is administer a database and collect small sums from website owners, but with computing power rising and practically no marginal cost to adding another website to the database, the entire enterprise is a license to print money. In the third quarter of 2019, Verisign showed operating income of $205.6 million on $308.4…

And registrars not charging 20+ USD per year for non-dot:com gTLD domains!

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#16

Post by dr_dshiv » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

oaiey wrote: post #13

dr_dshiv wrote: post #11

Can someone explain the issue? Currently, anyone can buy a .org. I imagine that this company will charge more money for .orgs in exchange for some verification procedure. Compare this to today, where anyone can buy .orgs for any reason: it might be a public good if there is some authentication and prestige. NGOs and non-profits have money. Paying $100 a year to maintain a verified "I'm not a company" status might be…

The UNHCR or another huge entity will not give a shit. They have a legal department which can end Ethos Capital if they like. However, the reading club with 20 members and yearly income of 300€ cannot afford a 100€ .org. .org and the PIR had a dedicated purpose.

But why not just get a .club extension? Shouldn't .orgs be reserved for big orgs?

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#17

Post by TomMarius » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

riddlemethat wrote: post #6

teruakohatu wrote: post #2

It seems that over time any sufficiently well funded non-profit will eventually hire a financial engineer as CEO and transform into a Hedge Fund with some sort of charitable appendage.

Absolutely true. My buddy managed money for the kind of non-profits everyone has heard of at one time or another. Tends to be that once they get big enough they find themselves recipients of endowments that they can invest however they see fit. They tend to put that capital to work in whatever yields the highest return. Know what offers the best returns? Stuff that tends to cause the problems the non-profit might hav…

Why do they do that? Are they extracting the profit out of the nonprofit somehow?

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#18

Post by m463 » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

iameli wrote: post #4

> Verisign controls the registries for .com and .net, two of the internet’s most popular. All it does is administer a database and collect small sums from website owners, but with computing power rising and practically no marginal cost to adding another website to the database, the entire enterprise is a license to print money. In the third quarter of 2019, Verisign showed operating income of $205.6 million on $308.4…

comcast, at&t and verizon have ~60% gross profit

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#19

Post by JohnFen » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #16

oaiey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UNHCR or another huge entity will not give a shit. They have a legal department which can end Ethos Capital if they like. However, the reading club with 20 members and yearly income of 300€ cannot afford a 100€ .org. .org and the PIR had a dedicated purpose.

But why not just get a .club extension? Shouldn't .orgs be reserved for big orgs?

> Shouldn't .orgs be reserved for big orgs?

Why should it be? The size of the orgs has never been a criteria in the past, and the majority of nonprofits using a .org domain are small.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#20

Post by majos » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

Here’s a slightly different question: the article mentions that Ethos is paying to take over PIR, thus taking over .org administration as well. How transparent is this transaction?

Viewed uncharitably, it looks like ICANN built a separate entity to admin .org, built a separate entity to buy it, and then claimed that the purchase was just normal business, even as they were self-dealing to sell to friends. Is this accurate, or is the purchase by Ethos actually something like market-rate? In that case, even if I dislike the capitalization of .org, it doesn’t seem illegal?