12 ms·
Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold to private equity firm
- coderintherye 7y agoI think this buries the lead a bit, the real story is that the aforementioned private equity firm is connected to (e.g. domain name was registered by) the former CEO of ICANN.
- hhas01 7y agoI'm shocked, shocked to find that graft is going on in here!
- lioeters 7y agoMe too. I wasn't happy about the sale of .org TLD, but this! > Former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade personally registered the domain name currently used by Ethos Capital in May and it was registered as a limited company in the US state of Delaware on May 14. That date is significant because it is one day after ICANN indicated it was planning to approve the lifting of price caps through its public comment summary. That seems like a textbook definition of "graft". The article also describes several people involved in this whole deal, shuffling among ICANN, Donuts, PIR ("public interest", sure..), Ethos Capital ("ethos", sure..) - which sounds like a textbook definition of "regulatory capture".
- PunksATawnyFill 7y agoICANN needs to be shut down, and canned TLDs done away with entirely except for gov, edu, and mil. What a massive rip-off and insult.
- OJFord 7y agoWoah this is way worse than the headline implies - I thought 'non-profit .org sold' meant one unlucky charity that forgot to renew its domain, not the whole TLD!
- smitty1e 7y agoThe non-profit nature of .org should be a major political issue. Or we'll end up with a global Social Credit system. Or, well, Orwell.
- Smithalicious 7y agoIs this some kind of joke I'm missing? Does the freedom of our society rely on the .org TLD?
- hamilyon2 7y agoNot the gp, but I see .org tld sale as a major breach of trust. Names are very, very serious business in internet. What is next? .gov domain sale to unscrupulous private firm based on Bahamas? Per-nation dns systems without respect to each other whatsoever and resulting collapse of https, since it is based on dns?
- smitty1e 7y agoThe general drift power concentrated in the hands of the unaccountable few should be a bigger concern.
- twgrp 7y agoI know people will think I'm trolling, but here it goes: why does it matter if they bump up the prices, when there are lots of TLDs to choose from, and the differences in price aren't that big?
- dekken_ 7y agoIt's not that simple I think If you have a business that is known as a ".org" changing that is not ideal, nor is a price hike rock/hard place
- Vinnl 7y agoI would think that would be because there are a lot of existing non-profits with .org domain names, for whom it would be far from ideal to lose that, or to have to spend larger parts of their budgets on their domain name.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago... and for those that choose not to renew based on cost or ideological protest, there's the opportunity for a scammer to slide their hand quietly into the glove of trust that was lovingly crafted by the previous long-term owners of the domain.
- ClearAndPresent 7y agoAddressed in the article - you did read the article, didn't you? - but: a) brand entrenchment - it's difficult to get organisations to rebrand But much more importantly b) the entire ethos goes against the sociological and ethical values of the .org TLD and those who chose it to represent their entities. Also the deal appears to have been done immorally, in bad faith, with timed offers based upon insider knowledge by individuals who stepped out of one job into another of conflicting interest. Not everything is about individual prices.
- maxerickson 7y agoThe supposed ethos. They done shown who they are.
- akdor1154 7y agoJesus fuck this is disgusting. Why do cries of "free market!!1" always seem to end up meaning "I want to profit at the expense of the public good"?
- wesammikhail 7y ago> Why do cries of "free market!!1" __always__ seem to end up meaning "I want to profit at the expense of the public good"? Jeez, I wonder how many calories you burn each day by jumping into conclusions... The entire internet was built by free market ethos in the sense that it was a network of people doing what they thought was best for them and their causes. But ofc, that´s not as important now is it? after all, once the fruits of the free market ripens, somehow the rules change and suddenly "public good" means whatever people want it to mean as long as it extracts value in their favor. Now don´t get me wrong, I dislike this .org bullshit as much as the next guy, but imagine if I would have said: Why do cries of "public good!!1" __always__ end up meaning "I want to abolish all profits and usher in the marxist utopia"? It would be utterly stupid of me to say that because that is not the case, and the same goes for your statement.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago> Why do cries of "free market!!1" __always__ seem to end up meaning "I want to profit at the expense of the public good"? That matches the reality I've found myself reading about in the news for the last decade or so. Regular folk don't go declaring "free market", they don't need to, they just get on with things. It's those who feel they need to distract from or justify their actions that declare "free market" mainly because that shuts up the majority of critics who refuse to follow the money trail back to their sponsors. Hypercapitalism and Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" and all that.
- ausbah 7y agoThe internet started as a government program, and so much for a "free market" when monopolistic ISPs control access to it.
- jon-wood 7y ago
- goatinaboat 7y agoI am old enough to remember when .com .net .org and so on had real meanings. But those days are long, long gone. When was the last time any registrar ever refused to issue a name based on the nature of the entity requesting it?
- ClearAndPresent 7y agoTried registering a .EDU domain recently? Or a .NGO? There are plenty.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> When was the last time any registrar ever refused to issue a name based on the nature of the entity requesting it? Unlike .org, .gov has actually gotten tighter since the early days for new registrations, though they didn't push the legacy non-federal sites off. .edu has also gotten more, not less, restrictive, IIRC. And .ngo, .mil, .int have clear and enforced meanings. A lot of newer domains do, too, though not always by type of entity.
- girvo 7y ago2007 when I asked for a .id.au that wasn’t my exact name, for me anyway!
- dharma1 7y agoPreviously discussed here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622
- throw0101a 7y agoFrom the section "Opaque decision-making": > Adding to the frustration is the fact that ICANN gave no explanation for moving ahead with the decision to lift caps despite the public opposition. It also carried out no economic analysis of the change, despite being aware that it could be worth billions of dollars. Unusually for such a high-profile issue, the decision was also made by the organization’s staff rather than its board.