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How We Saved Dot Org

eff.org

11–20 of 156 posts

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#11
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So $1 per month instead of $2?

Not everyone counts their holdings in USD. That price difference may be what sets a launched and abandoned project apart. One of my neighbors is 17 and interested in coding and computers. I'd say their family MAYBE brings in 250 USD a month -- but probably less. A dollar can be a lot.

Yeah, let's get private equity involved, that'll make it cheaper for sure.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#12
post #3

The fees on .org are expensive compared to the other top level domains com/net I recently switched from org to the countrycode version for a domain that was available and saved half of the cost.

Currently $2/yr extra ($10.99/yr) at Dynadot and most other good registrars

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#13
post #9

I love a lot of what the EFF does, but this campaign, and many other organizations involved in it got a lot wrong. The real issue, that in fairness the EFF leads with, was the change in the .org contract, not the sale itself. The most robust overview of the whole thing that I have read can be found here: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/05/01/no-real-winner... Whether people like it or not the operation of the…

> Whether people like it or not the operation of the DNS, including .org, is a commercial endeavor Whether people like it or not, this doesn't have to mean privatized, nor profitable.

You're right that it doesn't have to, but I certainly don't think converting the DNS to a publicly run entity by some particular government is anything close to a good idea.

Or if that's really your thing, stick to ccTLDs which for the most part are run by arms length agencies of national governments and subject to far stricter rules than gtlds.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#14
Seems like a nice victory in a single battle. But in the context of a much larger war in the TLD space it doesn’t seem like domain registrants are winning:

https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/19/donuts-is-acquiring-af...

EDIT to add: http://domainincite.com/26107-westerdal-offloads-two-more-gt...

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#15
post #4
post #3

The fees on .org are expensive compared to the other top level domains com/net I recently switched from org to the countrycode version for a domain that was available and saved half of the cost.

So $1 per month instead of $2?

I'd be really interested where you can buy .org domains for $2 a year so that I can move my domains there. Please don't disappoint me!

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#17

I love a lot of what the EFF does, but this campaign, and many other organizations involved in it got a lot wrong. The real issue, that in fairness the EFF leads with, was the change in the .org contract, not the sale itself. The most robust overview of the whole thing that I have read can be found here: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/05/01/no-real-winner... Whether people like it or not the operation of the…

This is like saying "Whether people like it or not the King of France is sovereign." Why is the operation of the DNS a commercial endeavor, and what would go wrong if it were not be the case? There are a huge number of examples of successful internet infrastructure projects that are non-commercial, perhaps with commercial participants or sponsors but not commercial themselves. (The IETF, Let's Encrypt, and Linux all come to mind.)

https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2020-09/root.html (posted on HN a while ago) says that the DNS root servers get about 10^11 queries per day, or one million queries per second. Hitting 10K queries per second on a single server is entirely doable, so you would just need 100 cloud VMs to handle the entire root DNS load.

I realize the TLD servers are more loaded than the roots, but it's still not so much traffic that it's entirely out of the question to make it a community-run service on the basis of traffic / engineering effort. So what other reason is there that it must be commercial?

(Note that there are over 10 million .org domain names, and they charge fees of about $9. Even if you cut fees to $1, that's still plenty of money for both infrastructure and labor. You could hire a team of ten SREs at very-senior-FAANG salaries and still have a bunch of money left over.)

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#18
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So $1 per month instead of $2?

Not everyone counts their holdings in USD. That price difference may be what sets a launched and abandoned project apart. One of my neighbors is 17 and interested in coding and computers. I'd say their family MAYBE brings in 250 USD a month -- but probably less. A dollar can be a lot.

Does your neighbor really need a domain, and does it have to be a .org? You can do web stuff with free or ultra-cheap domains. And most hosting services will cost much more than the $0.67 or $0.85 you pay per month for a .com or .org respectively (at CloudFlare Domains).

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#19
post #10

Ah yes, bravo EFF, you've won another battle barely keeping us at the status quo. When are you going to stop playing whack-a-mole trying to defend against every assault on internet freedoms and go on the offensive and try to win the game for the good guys? We now have the ability to give the poorest child on earth access to the same information as the richest, and yet we allow industry to shackle us instead. It's tim…

You are probably getting downvoted because this is the best we have right now. We would all love to stop playing whack-a-mole, but for that we need more resources for groups like EFF, not disregard them for what they actually accomplish. If you know any ways or groups more successful in achieving the goals of intellectual freedom, a lot of us are very interested.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#20

Seems like a nice victory in a single battle. But in the context of a much larger war in the TLD space it doesn’t seem like domain registrants are winning: https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/19/donuts-is-acquiring-af... EDIT to add: http://domainincite.com/26107-westerdal-offloads-two-more-gt...

Maybe the best outcome will be that Donuts gobbles up everything, gets sued for being an illegal monopoly, broken up, and then the whole sordid registry system can be replaced.
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