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How We Saved Dot Org

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Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#41

Post by zrm »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #34
brandur wrote: post #21

Another great win for the EFF. We shouldn't forget how much time and effort fighting this kind of thing takes, and we are very lucky to have an organization who's willing to put in the legwork from which all of us are huge beneficiaries. ( Edit: just donated. ) I guess it was implied by the article, but wasn't perfectly clear to me: does this mean that .org just stays with its current holders, ISOC? (Internet Society…

> In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. Clearly, there’s more to managing a domain than a “license to print money”. Otherwise, who would want to sell it?

It's a license to print a specific amount of money every year. So the party who would want to sell it is the party who wants an enormous pile of money right away instead of a large amount every year indefinitely.

It's inherently suspicious when that party is supposed to be a non-profit, because they should generally want to keep doing their work going forward instead of cashing out like some kind of for-profit corporate raiders.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#42

Post by emptyparadise »

breck wrote: 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…

I honestly wish the EFF was as powerful as you imagine it to be.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#44

Post by zrm »

wegs wrote: post #38
noizejoy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you have me curious - what kind of better replacement do you have in mind?

Rules: 1) First-come-first-serve for your first handful of domains. Price is nominal (e.g. $1/year). 2) Increasing price with number of domains held. If I hold myname.com, it's $1. If I hold a thousand domain, the last 500 are at $1000/year. 3) Oversight for transfers. If sold, resale value is capped. Historic domains shouldn't be used for spam but perhaps go to archive.org or similar entities. 4) Managed by a govern…

> Increasing price with number of domains held. If I hold myname.com, it's $1. If I hold a thousand domain, the last 500 are at $1000/year.

People will just form a thousand LLCs or use straw men.

> Managed by a government institution or not-for-profit with open meetings, salary caps, public records requests, and other (legally-enforceable) checks-and-balances.

I think you're making this too complicated.

Just prohibit them from ever raising the price or changing the terms on an existing registrant. The cost of hosting goes down over time, so the price should never increase. If you started off paying $10/year, it never goes up, the end.

And then create more sensible top-level domains, like when they're industry-specific. Then there is more competition between TLDs and the value of good names stays lower, which discourages squatting because it's less profitable when good names are less scarce.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#45

Post by Tostino »

wegs wrote: post #38
noizejoy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you have me curious - what kind of better replacement do you have in mind?

Rules: 1) First-come-first-serve for your first handful of domains. Price is nominal (e.g. $1/year). 2) Increasing price with number of domains held. If I hold myname.com, it's $1. If I hold a thousand domain, the last 500 are at $1000/year. 3) Oversight for transfers. If sold, resale value is capped. Historic domains shouldn't be used for spam but perhaps go to archive.org or similar entities. 4) Managed by a govern…

I could live with that.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#46

Post by brandur »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #34
brandur wrote: post #21

Another great win for the EFF. We shouldn't forget how much time and effort fighting this kind of thing takes, and we are very lucky to have an organization who's willing to put in the legwork from which all of us are huge beneficiaries. ( Edit: just donated. ) I guess it was implied by the article, but wasn't perfectly clear to me: does this mean that .org just stays with its current holders, ISOC? (Internet Society…

> In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. Clearly, there’s more to managing a domain than a “license to print money”. Otherwise, who would want to sell it?

We don't need to guess on this one. One of ISOC members who helped seal this greasy deal wrote a whole thinkpiece last year justifying it:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_o...

The short version is that guaranteed annual recurring revenue is great, but a billion dollars all at once is a lot of money, and could be used for all kinds of things.

Not in the article: because it would be Ethos who'd later raise prices on .org (had the plan gone through), the ISOC would have some deniability of not having been the direct infractor. It'd be a win/win: Ethos would still profit despite the high price tag, and ISOC would get a huge windfall while keeping its hands only a little grimy (not dirty, but not clean).

And if the piece's reasoning seemed sound to you, I'd call attention in particular to these sentences:

> Ethos has said that their plan is to "live within the spirit of historic practice," that is, to manage prices roughly as PIR would have under the stewardship of the Internet Society. If they impose the maximum 10% price increase plan for ten years, the price will be around $26 per year — still quite affordable.

Compare them to what the EFF wrote, and you'll see that notably absent from Richard's article is how the 10% increase cap is only active for the first eight years (not even 10 as stated). After that, Ethos was free to raise prices as much as they liked. Somehow, Richard mistakenly forgot to include this rather important detail.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#47

Post by Ericson2314 »

I'm a big fan of the EFF, but all this flexing over...getting back to the status quo sure as hell reminds me of https://incite-national.org/beyond-the-non-profit-industrial....

Every growing NGOs in a perfect stalemate of ever increasing outrage and budgets is a lot like Oceania and Eastasia in perpetual war so the increasing productivity doesn't lead to leisure time.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#48

Post by Retric »

jandrese wrote: post #36
yzmtf2008 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. Clearly, there’s more to managing a domain than a “license to print money”. Otherwise, who would want to sell it?

Someone looking for a quick buck?

Exactly, a non profit making X money per year is harder for insiders to profit from. However, setup a sale to the company of your choice and suddenly you can profit handsomely.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#49

Post by Tostino »

emptyparadise wrote: post #42
breck wrote: 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…

I honestly wish the EFF was as powerful as you imagine it to be.

Right? Why throw stones at the EFF who are actually doing something in the fight. They don't have the resources to do more than now, and yeah it feels like a losing battle. Don't shit on the people who are with you in that battle though.
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