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The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

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Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#51

Post by philsnow »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #33
philsnow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, .org is reserved for organizations that aren't dedicated to making money. size isn't relevant. let me turn the question around: why should Ethos get .org? make them drum up support for some new TLD. This is purely, purely a cash grab, allowed by regulatory capture, and it should be stopped.

What does "reserved" mean? Anyone can buy a .org. There isn't any actual restriction. Well, let's say that a mission driven for profit corporation could ensure that .org owners aren't for-profit -- and do a better job than the current committee. Should they be allowed a .org? In my world, I'd say no, since I'd prefer that .orgs are actually restricted to non corporates.

> What does "reserved" mean? Anyone can buy a .org. There isn't any actual restriction.

Fair point. The "restriction" was really a recommendation (from RFC 920 in 1985, in a more polite time on the nascent "internet").

> [...] Should they be allowed a .org?

Who cares? The cat is out of the bag. As of today there are 1514 TLDs [0]. .mil and .gov should still have some requirements, but .org, .net, .com (and almost all the other TLDs) are all effectively the same thing.

[0] http://stats.research.icann.org/dns/tld_report/

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#52

Post by JohnFen »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #37

I updated my .org domains for the max 5 years that my provider would let me. At least I'm locked in for now. The whole thing seems shady though I really want to believe that the new owner will play nice. As humans we can decide that altruism > greed, something tells me that greed will rule here.

> I really want to believe that the new owner will play nice

I do too, but everything that the players involved in this have said and done strongly indicates that "playing nice" or even behaving relatively responsibly isn't in their DNA.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#54

Post by BLKNSLVR »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #37

I updated my .org domains for the max 5 years that my provider would let me. At least I'm locked in for now. The whole thing seems shady though I really want to believe that the new owner will play nice. As humans we can decide that altruism > greed, something tells me that greed will rule here.

That's a good start, but maybe also purchase a separate non-.org domain and start the process of migration ASAFP.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#55

Post by munk-a »

ICANN has no technical power to enforce this change, so continuing with it while there is so much dissent is dangerous to itself and the current organization of the internet. If some big players in the DNS space decided to object to this change (like say google and a few ISPs who thought they should get a bigger slice of the registration pie) they could just disrespect registrations published by Ethos and require an additional fee to propagate a new name to their servers (Oh you registered a name? Well, how much is allowing comcast users[1] to see it worth to you)... I hope ICANN stops being silly before it fractures assumptions around DNS propagation.

1. Specifically all those users who use the default assigned DNS, which is the vast majority.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#56

Post by markdown »

toyg wrote: post #46
toomuchtodo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if a signed version of the content was always accessible, content addressable, in the Internet Archive? Does it matter than what the current namespace is?

> in the Internet Archive I would wager that 95% of web users do not even know that IA exists, let alone that they can use it. > Does it matter than what the current namespace is? As long as it's the only thing a browser will consider to retrieve information, yes. Which is why cool URIs don't change.

> I would wager that 95% of web users do not even know that IA exist

You are far too optimistic. It's probably more like 99.999999%

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#57

Post by kick »

cptskippy wrote: post #47
kick wrote: post #7

I found this article incredible (despite the tabloid-like headline) on this subject: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/14/icann_org_redacted/ TL;DR: Purchase funded by debt, includes another ex-ICANNer, will be done through four different companies. Some highlights that I think are important from it: Incredibly, the names of three directors of the organization that will buy the registry remain redacted in documen…

> (despite the tabloid-like headline) I like everything about The Register but the cheezy headlines, nicknames, and bad photoshop are some of the best parts.

I mean, I enjoy it for personal consumption. It makes it way harder to seriously share, though!

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#58

Post by iameli »

m463 wrote: post #18
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

right, exactly - I'm ~200 times angrier at Comcast for their $22.7 billion in profits than I am at Verisign for their $100 million.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#59

Post by iameli »

arkitaip wrote: post #21
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!).

That's fair. I'm hoping this'll become less true over time as folks get used to there being lots of TLDs.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#60

Post by munk-a »

swiley wrote: post #35
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 have some familiarity with the .com/.net stuff Yes the registry is incredibly cheap to run, it’s the name servers themselves that are so expensive (from what I understand this is partially due to uptime requirements.)

Can you clarify a bit here?

I believe most people, when executing a name look up, will usually just end up talking to one of a battery of ISP provided DNS servers. So while the registry's name servers need to feed those servers (and probably be heavily redundant and reliable) they wouldn't actually end up handling an insane amount of traffic. I'm actually a bit curious now if there are any sorts of requirements on how much traffic registrars need to be able to support or if everyone just over-resources and still makes enough money that the question has never been deeply investigated.

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