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How We Saved Dot Org

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Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#71

Post by cortesoft »

vfclists wrote: post #67
beambot wrote: post #43

You know who I would trust to administer the .org TLD for long-term public good... The EFF.

Serious money is a huge temptation. Have you noticed the path down which the ACLU and SPLC have gone? Do you notice how Mozilla have shed staff despite the lack on any major dent in their income? I'm sorry but these types of "activist" companies have a way of going wrong when there are huge sums of money involved. Just leave them where they are and let them continue as usual.

What path have the ACLU and SPLC gone down?

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#72

Post by dboreham »

jlokier wrote: post #63
zrm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> People will just form a thousand LLCs or use straw men. Replace "if I hold" with "if the Beneficial Owner holds" to stop that. Beneficial ownership is not masked by forming LLCs or using intermediaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_ownership

That isn't designed to be an anti-sybil measure, and won't work as such.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#73

Post by codys »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #50

For anyone who shops at Amazon, you can use Amazon Smile to automatically donate a percent of your purchases to EFF: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_s...

I do this, but I also worry that a result of "Amazon Smile" will be that charitable organizations will be less willing to be critical of Amazon due to donations to them being provided by Amazon.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#74

Post by karmahunting »

EFF should "let's encrypt" TLDs...

They could buy one or several TLDs and provide it for a reasonable price and not increase the price unless it's really necessary for the operation of the TLD....

I'll leave the details to the experts...

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#75

Post by TwoBit »

No good can possibly come from the sale of something in the public interest to a private equity firm. Surely ICANN knew this, and the attempt to go through with it indicates corruption within ICANN.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#76

Post by alsetmusic »

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…

I’m literally wearing (for the first time, by coincidence) my new handy dandy 30y-of-EFF tshirt that I got for supporting them last month. I usually donate to causes and pass on goods because I don’t care for the merch (plus want the money to go all the way). EFF is a brand I want to wear. They’re awesome.

I first joined their mailing list ~1996(?) when DMCA was being hashed out. I was too young to know if I was on the right side when reading their updates (legalese on a teen was confusing). I hope more people here will open their wallets. EFF are fighting the good fight.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#77

Post by jethro_tell »

hetman wrote: post #61
beambot wrote: post #43

You know who I would trust to administer the .org TLD for long-term public good... The EFF.

I definitely agree in the short term, but having profitable assets might attract the wrong kind of people to the organisation so I don't know how I feel about it in the long term.

Surely this could be set up to redirect profits into the EFFs other work in a binding sort of way.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#78

Post by noizejoy »

jlokier wrote: post #63
zrm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> People will just form a thousand LLCs or use straw men. Replace "if I hold" with "if the Beneficial Owner holds" to stop that. Beneficial ownership is not masked by forming LLCs or using intermediaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_ownership

> Beneficial ownership is not masked by forming LLCs or using intermediaries.

Defining a term does not make it a reality, it would seem: https://www.financierworldwide.com/tackling-beneficial-owner...

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

jlokier wrote: post #63
zrm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> People will just form a thousand LLCs or use straw men. Replace "if I hold" with "if the Beneficial Owner holds" to stop that. Beneficial ownership is not masked by forming LLCs or using intermediaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_ownership

> Beneficial ownership is not masked by forming LLCs or using intermediaries.

Well, yeah, in practice it often is masked that way. Sufficient effort can often penetrate the mask, by that doesn't mean it's not effectively masked.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#80

Post by domador »

brandur wrote: post #46
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?

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…

Another impression I got from Richard Barnes' thinkpiece is his apparent opinion that managing the .org registry was turning into a resource-intensive, time-consuming responsibility for the Internet Society and a distraction from its main mission. If that were the case, then how about if the .org registry were turned over to a non-profit that was solely and strictly dedicated to running the registry responsibly and affordably? Is creating such a non-profit feasible? Could it survive over the long term?

For that matter, how much does running a TLD registry with a few million domains actually cost? To me, the whole domain name registration business reeks of rent-seeking and of the exploitation of monopolies, but I'm don't know enough about it yet to confirm these suspicions.

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