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The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

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Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#91
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.

Right, right, but that's the same as with the land example usually trotted out. Nothing is ever zero-wealth-creation. It's just that the majority of .org's reputableness comes from the organizations using it and the tenure of the orgs using it. The majority of the growth in .org's wealth will be due to the fact that true wealth creators are participating on it.

It's textbook economic rent.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#92
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Per RFC920[1], which defined the initial TLDs, the ORG domain was for "Organizations". It doesn't say anything about "ethos", not-for-profit status, etc. It's for "organizations". I'd love to see a citation re: this "not-for-profit" designation being codified somewhere by IANA. It's not supported by RFC 920. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920

I think it's an implicit read, that is, given that anyone commercial should be using .com, anyone using .org should be non-commercial (and likewise non-educational, non-governmental, non-military).

That being said, it's not like .org has, in practice, ever been exclusively for non-commercial entities or non-profits.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#93

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…

I think that there's a lot of truth in criticisms of both capitalism and socialism. Running the org nameservers seems like a job best done by a non-profit organization, using some minimal funds from domain renewals. Neither profit-making enterprise or government body seems like an ideal match.

I suppose non-profit organizations can still go bad, so transparency in operations, and some kind of oversight mechanism that can replace the directors if necessary, would be needed.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#94
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Per RFC920[1], which defined the initial TLDs, the ORG domain was for "Organizations". It doesn't say anything about "ethos", not-for-profit status, etc. It's for "organizations". I'd love to see a citation re: this "not-for-profit" designation being codified somewhere by IANA. It's not supported by RFC 920. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920

I'd also love to see something indicating it is for big organizations only, which is patently false. Obviously it is irrelevant why it has that ethos as long as it in fact exists (if you want to pretend the general public doesn't see .org as generally indicating a service to humanity rather than a commercial venture, we can just agree to disagree). Also, in the doc you link it is clearly, evidently, for non-commercial organizations since .com comes first and covers all commercial entities, and.org is for all other entities. It is part of the Public Interest Registry. The point is there is a legitimate reason to want to use it, even if you are small - and no good reason to force small NGOs to abandon it other than to increase profit extraction from non-commercial organizations.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#95
Could this situation be improved/eliminated when we move from TCP/IP to NDN (Named Data Network)?

In NDN, you don't request data from a specific host, hence no need to specify the receiving machine's IP, indeed, you send the packet to a p2p network, another with certain data / signature can answer your request.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#96
post #76
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

.gg has seen decent adoption in newer gaming related sites. But that's the only one I can think of right now.

[deleted]

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#97

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 t…

Nothing is sacrosanct to those people. They don't care about the technology like we do, it's just a way for them to make their money. They'll destroy all of it just to get their way. They won't lose any sleep over it.

Part of me hopes every TLD gets hit by this so that the exploitation becomes unbearable and people are forced to create a better system. Hopefully we'll end up with something that can't be subverted by these corporates.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#99
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%

[deleted]

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#100
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... :)

I'm inclined to disagree.
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