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The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

prospect.org

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Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#21

Post by arkitaip »

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…

I suspect what the new gTLD program has really done is to make com/org/net seem even more trustworthy and premium because people can no longer keep up with the influx of new gTLDs ( all 1200 of them!).

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#22

Post by jasonvorhe »

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?

They aren't and they never were.

On which basis would you restrict registrations from country x, where founding some organization is free or even comes with tax benefits while you'd allow registrations from countries requires some kind of operating income?

It doesn't make any sense.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#23

Post by sgc »

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?

Why should it? .Org is about an ethos of philanthropy, which a club just doesn't have.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#24

Post by dr_dshiv »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #22
dr_dshiv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They aren't and they never were. On which basis would you restrict registrations from country x, where founding some organization is free or even comes with tax benefits while you'd allow registrations from countries requires some kind of operating income? It doesn't make any sense.

I don't understand. Can you clarify what you mean by "registrations from countries requires some kind of operating income"?

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#25

Post by paulmd »

TomMarius wrote: post #17
riddlemethat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nonprofits still have to "make a profit" on the services they provide if they want to be a going concern. Unless you've got some big project to dump it into, it goes into an endowment for "a rainy day". Which then starts looking for places to park that money.

Some of the biggest nonprofits also have the biggest endowments and/or asset holdings - colleges/universities, hospital systems, religious leadership, etc etc.

Fundamentally, most non-profits are still run like a for-profit corporation and provide services in exchange for money, they just don't have publicly traded shares, dividends, etc. Think Harvard or hospital systems, not ACLU or Red Cross.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#26

Post by ketzo »

TomMarius wrote: post #17
riddlemethat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I mean, it's easy to justify:

"Our organization does good work with the money we have."

"We could do more good work, or better work, with more money."

"Therefore investments/endowments we receive should be invested inwards, to increase the amount of money we have available with which to do good work."

You can see, of course, how this kind of cycle could become more about the money than the good work.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#28

Post by dr_dshiv »

JohnFen wrote: post #19
dr_dshiv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if there was a grandfather clause for existing orgs, so there is no funny business on pressuring people to change their domain.

But I also feel like it would make sense to have a domain extension that meant something. Right now it seems like it does, but it doesn't.

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