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The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

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Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#81

Post by colejohnson66 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #79
Retric wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating the .org domain is not creating new wealth. It’s the same as a VA selling toll roads or someone buys old songs. They all spend some money maximize their income stream. However, that spending is not creating something useful. Operations spending is required, but does not generate any long term wealth. You keep cleaning a hotel ever day and it does not get ever cleaner over time the way an actual investment d…

> that spending is not creating something useful. operators of a domain are essentially stewards of that domain and ensure that it's operated correctly, that there are no duplicates, and that it can be trusted. They do create value in the same way the American bar association does, by establishing and maintaining trust between end-users and providers of a service.

But couldn’t that all be done by a non-profit? You know, the ones that (are the target) buy(er of) the .org domains?

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#82

Post by jlokier »

Barrin92 wrote: post #79
Retric wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating the .org domain is not creating new wealth. It’s the same as a VA selling toll roads or someone buys old songs. They all spend some money maximize their income stream. However, that spending is not creating something useful. Operations spending is required, but does not generate any long term wealth. You keep cleaning a hotel ever day and it does not get ever cleaner over time the way an actual investment d…

> that spending is not creating something useful. operators of a domain are essentially stewards of that domain and ensure that it's operated correctly, that there are no duplicates, and that it can be trusted. They do create value in the same way the American bar association does, by establishing and maintaining trust between end-users and providers of a service.

If that was what people expected the new operators to do, people wouldn't be upset and feel like they are losing the treasured .org.

People do not expect the new owners will operate the domain correctly, meaning ensure that the TLD remains available at reasonable prices and conditions to the current types of users.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#83

Post by pjmorris »

frandroid wrote: post #64
dang wrote: post #9

I think these are the major related threads so far. In reverse order: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21931258 - The NRO Issues Inspection Request to ICANN Concerning .ORG Sale https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21800085 - ICANN Delays .ORG Sale Approval https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21723682 - Why ISOC sold .ORG to VCs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21689121 - The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for…

It's almost as if HN could use a tagging system... :)

Maciej Cegłowski would like a [word](https://pinboard.in) with you.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#84

Post by jlokier »

stubish wrote: post #74
iameli wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is this happening? Actual question if there is someone here who measures this sort of thing. .io seems to have been accepted by the tech community, as the place to go when you can't get your .com or .net. Maybe .ai too. Are there any new gTLDs gaining acceptance in the wider community?

.io is an interesting example - because it is quite expensive yearly, poorer techies avoid it.

So anyone who thinks .io is as good as .org is probably not price sensitive, and might be contributing to the worry that .org will go the same way eventually.

.ai is even more expensive, but I haven't noticed .ai domains being used for things I visited, only heard that they are used.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#85

Post by Rels »

ketzo wrote: post #26
TomMarius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. And that's actually how the .org sell was justified. From http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_o... :

"This transaction will put that bigger mission on a solid footing — so that the Internet Society can provide much more substantive help to nonprofits than merely leasing domain names, and with more continuity over time. While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream, it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business, and required a certain amount of our resources to be spent managing that business, distracting from the broader mission. Especially as PIR has grown over time, this situation has become increasingly untenable. Establishing a more diverse portfolio of investments will allow us to have more predictable revenue over time, and to take a longer-range perspective when it comes to achieving our mission. "

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#86

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #79
Retric wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating the .org domain is not creating new wealth. It’s the same as a VA selling toll roads or someone buys old songs. They all spend some money maximize their income stream. However, that spending is not creating something useful. Operations spending is required, but does not generate any long term wealth. You keep cleaning a hotel ever day and it does not get ever cleaner over time the way an actual investment d…

> that spending is not creating something useful. operators of a domain are essentially stewards of that domain and ensure that it's operated correctly, that there are no duplicates, and that it can be trusted. They do create value in the same way the American bar association does, by establishing and maintaining trust between end-users and providers of a service.

[deleted]

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#87

Post by annoyingnoob »

throwawayjava wrote: post #78
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.

to future readers: namecheap will let you do 9 years.

In the past I've had a lot of issues with spammers and scammers using domain names that came from namecheap. namecheap made it difficult to report and resolve issues, spammer/scammers could create names much faster than they could be taken down. namecheap was not interested in tying one violation to another, they did not want to see that a few players were generating a lot of names that appeared to be from different people but all immediately started running the same spam/scam. If namecheap chooses to be a citadel for spammer/scammers then I'm sure not going to give them any of my money.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#88

Post by koolba »

cptskippy wrote: post #65
kick wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean? Headlines like "Yabba Dabba Doo it's the iPad 2" scream professionalism.

My favorites were the Yahoo! ones that added! an! exclamation! mark! on! every! word!

That and anything that uses the word “boffin”.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#89

Post by coliveira »

chaostheory wrote: post #68
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas the Internet was created in a capitalist world, and capitalism loves rent-seeking.

Would it be any different in a non-capitalist world? If we’re being honest, corruption eventually permeates everything given time. IMO the biggest difference between capitalism and socialism is the massive centralization of power in socialist systems. The effects of corruption tend to be much worse the more power is concentrated. These systems of finite resource distribution are ultimately just hacks to mitigate the…

Capitalism is a system created by and for sociopaths. It doesn't get much worse than that.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#90

Post by [deleted] »

chaostheory wrote: post #77
wwright wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you compare the centralization of a socialist government against the centralization of power among FAANG? Genuine question.

In a purely socialist system, all power lies in the government itself. All decisions for resource distribution lies with the government itself. In a capitalist system, power is more distributed between the government and private organizations. The government alone doesn’t get to decide who gets what resources. while these private organizations will collaborate with the gov and vice versa at times, there will always b…

[deleted]
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