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The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

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Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#101

Post by wtmt »

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.

You should perhaps transfer your domain to another registrar who will allow the standard maximum duration of 10 years (as of now) and then renew the domain for another five years right away. Cloudflare could be an option to transfer to, though I haven’t used it.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#103

Post by CrazyStat »

markdown wrote: post #56
toyg wrote: 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%

> 99.999999%

That would mean only 80-odd people know about IA, which seems a tad low :P

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#104

Post by tryptophan »

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

'gross profit' has a very specific meaning that is unintuitive. It doesn't include fixed costs or taxes. It's much better to look at profit margin, which is what they actually make. For Comcast's case, it's like 11.5%.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#105

Post by dang »

anewvillager wrote: post #102
dang wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to disagree.

Why?

It would add a lot of complexity, and any system has only a limited number of complexity cards to play. I'd rather play them on things that have a clear connection to HN's core.

With features like this, the benefits are obvious while the costs are not. I fear those.

That's not to say that tagging is always a bad idea—far from it. It depends on the system.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#106

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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?

ccTLDs are vulnerable to censorship by the country owning them.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#107

Post by dredmorbius »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #40
byuu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 softwa…

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?

That's helpful.

But branding, let alone domain names, is proof that namespaces matter. And have immense market value.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#108

Post by captncraig »

dorfsmay wrote: post #15
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!

This is a big problem for me. I will buy novelty domains on sale, then abandon them after a year because the renewal price is so much higher than the 1st year promotion. At least com and net are fairly consistent year to year.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#109

Post by ardy42 »

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 see the real answer to this as the gTLD program: radically expand the number of domain-issuing entities and normalize companies operating on something other than .com.

However, that has another problem in that it increases the opportunity for fraud via. The benefit of a small number of tlds is that the most memorable part is typically the most unique and provides human-distinguishable identity, but that's out the window if you've normalized mybusiness.com, mybusiness.biz, mybusiness.business, mybustiness.bz, mybusiness.bus, etc. Typosquatting still exists with .com, but it's far more manageable that the above.

Re: The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org

#110

Post by goatinaboat »

Rels wrote: post #85
ketzo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inco…

Other than managing .org no one can say what ISOC’s so-called mission is nor point to any evidence of them doing it. The salaries they pay themselves however are substantial.
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