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How We Saved Dot Org

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Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#81

Post by domador »

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?

I looks like Ethos Capital would have had to make at least $100 per domain to recover the cost of buying the .org registry, never mind making a profit. I wonder how much of a profit they were aiming for and how quickly they planned on making that profit...

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#82

Post by wahern »

jethro_tell wrote: post #77
hetman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's precisely how ICANN was set up, as a public benefit corporation with articles of incorporation that required it to promote "the global public interest in the operational stability of the Internet." But if you control the board, in the long term you can accomplish pretty much whatever you want. Relying on regulators to give such an organization sufficient attention isn't a good strategy; their attention is spread thin across thousands of organizations, and of course they lack domain knowledge. Though, you can leverage the threat of regulators to impede the board, much like the EFF did as a vigilant third party.

Ultimately what needs to happen is for ICANN board members to be replaced with better people; perhaps people nominated by the EFF and similar organizations. Hopefully that will happen. Moving responsibilities to the EFF just shuffles labels around. The same thing that happened to ICANN could happen to EFF, it just hasn't happened yet because EFF isn't holding billions in assets.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#83

Post by ISO-morphism »

macintux wrote: post #29
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…

You're upset that the EFF isn't able to work miracles? Abolishing intellectual property (which, frankly, sounds like a terrible idea) would be a global effort requiring the invalidation of treaties and battling a nearly infinite war chest because the wealthiest companies in the world rely on it.

> Intellectual Property

We've come to call ideas and iterative mutations of such thoughtstuff "property" as if thoughts can be owned.

What we call "intellectual property" is more accurately (at least in my current strong conclusion) called monopoly rights. Monopoly rights over the application and commercial profit of such thoughtstuff as a conscious trade-off/government subsidy to provide economic incentive for innovation outside of whatever would exist naturally.

Property rights over scarce resources are a fundamental tenant of a liberal society.

Intellectual property is a government subsidy.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#84

Post by stkdump »

codys wrote: post #73
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.

Right. Also buy somewhere, anywhere else whenever possible. You can still donate separately.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#85

Post by foepys »

domador wrote: post #80
brandur wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> 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?

.de is run by a non-profit and has been since 1996. Before that it had been run by researchers of the University of Karlsruhe. Until a few years ago, .de was the largest ccTLD and the second largest TLD overall.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DENIC (english, short)

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DENIC (german, long and informative)

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#86

Post by tortasaur »

cortesoft wrote: post #71
vfclists wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not sure what the parent was talking about specifically, but the ACLU has fallen into the trap of pursuing partisan politics. They have leaned hard into anti-Trump rhetoric to the point that it consumes almost all of their messaging, and at the same time they have distanced themselves from ideals they once defended (in particular, they have stopped providing legal defense support for free speech court cases if they find the speech sufficiently reprehensible).

The problem I personally have with this shift is that organizations like the ACLU, FSF, and EFF are really only useful if they defend a core set of ideals rather than towing the ever-shifting partisan line. There are plenty of ways to fund Democrat/Republican causes, but strikingly few ways to fund civil liberty defense, software freedom, and the rest of the values with less mind share.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#87

Post by jacquesm »

As a rule of thumb: If some party or law has 'freedom', 'ethics', 'public', 'peoples' or such words in their name in one form or another then you're being had.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#88

Post by hliyan »

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…

We don't need to go to this extreme.

Restore copyrights and patents to 25 years. Place burden of proof on the copyright claimant.

Re: How We Saved Dot Org

#90

Post by Daho0n »

wahern wrote: post #82
jethro_tell wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's precisely how ICANN was set up, as a public benefit corporation with articles of incorporation that required it to promote "the global public interest in the operational stability of the Internet." But if you control the board, in the long term you can accomplish pretty much whatever you want. Relying on regulators to give such an organization sufficient attention isn't a good strategy; their attention is spre…

What needs to happen is for ICANN to be replaced by an international body outside the US.
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