20 ms·

Save .org

2297 points by jaden 7y ago

netfl0 7y ago
Does any one have a source for the rationale behind the sale? I was surprised it was even considered.
- visiblink 7y ago
  Read this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s... It appears to be a corrupt inside job.
  - netfl0 7y ago
    Wow, despicable. Thank you.
jdkee 7y ago
Again why does ISOC feel they have to do this? Are they starved for funding? This sale directly contravenes several of the founding ideals of the Internet.
- ohashi 7y ago
  Why did it happen entirely behind closed doors? No way they got this deal together just after price caps were removed. Was this orchestrated beforehand? Domain registrations for Ethos Capital pre-date the change and timing coincides with proposed contract change to remove price caps. What does Andrew Sullivan get for this move? Is Jon Nevett connected as well considering his ties to Donuts which is connected to Abry Partners which was managed by now Ethos Capital CEO? So many questions, all this happening in shadows means we shouldn't give any benefit of the doubt.
chrisblackwell 7y ago
People. We are losing the Internet that we all love and care for so deeply. We all need to rise up to fight for the freedom the Internet gives us.
davidu 7y ago
This is essentially a hijacking of the DNS as far as I’m concerned. The sale of .org is heinous; And I’m an unabashed capitalist. There is absolutely nothing defensible about this move that I can see. Is there any argument that this is beneficial to anyone except Ethos and Internet Society? Is it even clear they have the right to sell it? Has every person at ISOC submitted conflict statements? Are they willing to commit to never benefit financially from Ethos controlled entities for 10+ years?
- Proven 7y ago
  > The sale of .org is heinous; And I’m an unabashed capitalist. It's fascist, if anything. The system was built by governments and government organizations. It is operated (milked) by the private sector. There are hundreds of crypto currencies. Each works well for someone, some work great for many. All are private. A capitalist DNS system could work without state interference.
- 3xblah 7y ago
  "This is essentially a hijacking of the DNS as far as I'm concerned." At the last NANOG, the keynote speaker described three instances where companies have "hijacted" the DNS. https://blog.apnic.net/2019/11/04/dns-wars/ https://blog.apnic.net/2019/11/04/dns-wars/ The first "hijack" was Versisign wildcarding unregistered .com and .net domains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder). The second was OpenDNS redirecting Google searches to an OpenDNS proxy (http://web.archive.org/web/20120518025819/http://www.opendns.com:80/support/article/111 http://web.archive.org/web/20120518025819/http://www.opendns...).[1] The third is the EDNS client subnet extension.[2] 1. Acording to the keynote this led to the creation of Google Public DNS "within 45 days". 2. If I am not mistaken, OpenDNS was an early proponent of EDNS client subnet adoption.
danielfoster 7y ago
The entire domain system is a racket.
- byuu 7y ago
  It always astounded me that for the longest time until only recently, you were expected to pay additional money, more than the domain cost itself, for HTTPS security (and if you wanted a wildcard certificate, substantially more money.) I guess when the gTLD explosion didn't result in massive new profits for the new TLDs (some are $100+/year!), the powers that be decided to focus on existing TLDs instead where there's extensive decades-long lock-in effects at play. No one needed company-name.ninja, but good luck giving up your company-name.org to a squatter or worse, your competition.
koolba 7y ago
How much does it actually cost to run a TLD? Even with the usual governmental bureaucracy overhead I bet it’s be a rounding error. Seems a good fit for something like the UN to take over.
- greggman2 7y ago
  No! I agree with you that it seems like it should be cheap but imagine the UN ran it. China would veto ".tw" as just one example of the many problems with government type entity in charge.
  - ohashi 7y ago
    Now China can simply buy Ethos Capital and run it. It's way cheaper than the UN.
    - greggman2 7y ago
      I'm not arguing having Ethos Capital is good. I'm arguing the UN running it is not a solution. (nor any likely government body for that matter who will likely take down any organization they don't agree with)
jonah-archive 7y ago
A couple additional things: EFF blog post on the topic: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-st... Here's the initial letter being sent from EFF & others to ICANN and the Internet Society: https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-interest-registry https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-in... (Disclaimer: I work for the Internet Archive, and we are one of the initial signatories to this letter.)
- DarkmSparks 7y ago
  Thank you and good luck.
- cobookman 7y ago
  Has the broader group thought about just buying their own tld? With a better governance model.
  - ohashi 7y ago
    Would it matter? You're already locked into years, maybe decades, of brand building. You'd still need to redirect your old .org indefinitely. .ORG should be properly managed and regulated, we shouldn't need to attempt to rebuild something because ICANN is corrupt and Internet Society is selling out non profits they promised to serve.
    - jlokier 7y ago
      Not just brand building. How many accounts are linked to your email, and how many of us have had that email on a .org for 10, 20, even 30 years in some cases. Do you even know how many accounts have that email address as either the primary, or backup/recovery email? An email address is central to identity management these days. Lose a long established domain, and you might lose access to most of your other internet accounts, especially the ones you don't use every day and are hard to remember.
hliyan 7y ago
This feels unreal! How is this even happening? Domains are more like the airwaves than a commercial product. How can they do this??
- behringer 7y ago
  Just wait until you see what they have planned for the airwaves next!
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    TBH I’d be happy for the (AM/FM radio) airwaves to be privatized if it meant getting rid of the absurd, antiquated rules about not being able to say certain words in song lyrics.
    - kdtsh 7y ago
      That shouldn’t be necessary though, better regulation of a limited resource is preferable to no regulation.
    - Brian_K_White 7y ago
      That problem is microscopic compared to the problems you would invite. Bad at math.
    - anticensor 7y ago
      Anyone freely interfering at high power would be dangerous for everyone.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      It doesn't actually mean that. Look at censorship that Facebook implements for an example of what you can expect. Sure, there might be some obscure stations that wouldn't have such rules... and nobody would know about them.
jolmg 7y ago
Lots of distros are in .org aren't they? I see Arch, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Centos, OpenSuse, Raspbian, Damn Small Linux, Linux From Scratch, NixOS, Guix, OpenWRT, PfSense, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, Illumos, and probably lots, lots more. GNU is also on .org. Also languages, at least Python, Ruby, Haskell, Rust, Go, Clojure, Racket, Zsh, etc. .org seems to be the go-to TLD for open source projects.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  ".org" is almost the standard for all community projects, there will be huge impact if the management went wrong.
  - yuz 7y ago
    What will be the impact?
    - patrickdavey 7y ago
      I run a tiny carpooling site (not for profit) snowpool.org . If they turned around and upped the fees to 3K a year or something, it would basically force me to shut the service down. This is an incredibly awful move, I'm completely astounded that it was allowed to happen.
      - chii 7y ago
        if there's money to doing something, it will happen. Why not just move to a different domain, and while your old one is still "cheap", do a redirect etc?
        patrickdavey 7y ago
        Because I've built up a presence over 10 years of running the site, so, I'm not just about to move! It'd be a huge pain to move probably hundreds of email addresses over to a new domain etc too (I sign up with [domain]@snowpool.org) It completely depends on what they do, I've renewed for 10 years so I have time now, if they put the fees to >500 a year then I'll definitely move. Do you own a domain yourself that people have been using for 10 years? You might feel differently about the ease of "just moving"
partiallypro 7y ago
Serious question, what are the actual downsides of this, if any? Or is the backlash due to the "private equity" being associated with evil? Doesn't seem like anything is actually changing other than who issues .org?
- yumraj 7y ago
  Evil or not, Private equity by definition is focused on maximizing profit. You can do the math.
- thenewnewguy 7y ago
  Serious question, did you even read the page? Specifically, the part where it makes specific complaints about the 2019 .org registry agreement, such as the ability to raise registration fees without ICANN approval?
  - partiallypro 7y ago
    So it goes up by $1 or $15, how does that hurt non-profits? They aren't going to out price other TLDs, the market isn't that elastic.
    - robjan 7y ago
      If you have already owned your .org, have used it in publicity materials, use it for all of your emails etc. then yes you are pretty much stuck with that domain no matter how much they jack up the price. So the domain is inelastic, that is a change in price will not significantly change demand for those who already own them.
      - techsupporter 7y ago
        Exactly. As a community, we have routinely given the advice to “own your identity” by buying a domain. Since most of the good com domains are long bought, someone newer to the internet is likely to have looked at org. If someone took us up on our advice in, say, 2014 that means that he or she has had a domain for five years. Five years to integrate that into a life in various ways, remembered or not. And now, that thing could cost $75/year with no recourse. Then there are people like me. My org domain is so old it can legally drink and soon be able to run for Congress. What is it worth to me? $200/year? $500? $1,000? I don’t know and it sucks to have to consider yet another astoundingly high cost of “living” in a world that keeps going up in cost.
windexh8er 7y ago
I've been thinking a lot about the sheer downsides of DNS overall. We need something different. Something decentralized, encrypted, something not reliant on a protocol that hasn't kept pace with security and privacy and we need something verifiable that provides accountability. As others have said TLDs have become a racket. Only the priveleged and nation states have the authority to use the system as a funnel of ridiculous revenue and rate manipulation. We don't need DNS anymore. It's become more of a lynchpin to bottleneck and advance control of the few and continues to erode our privacy as it stands today. What's next?
- judge2020 7y ago
  The problem is that DNS powers the internet as we know it, getting everything ever to switch over is at least another 30 years after you make a protocol (that would also need to have literally no downsides).
  - cobookman 7y ago
    Not sure I agree. If FF & Chrome both supported it...it'd be in effect in < 5 years total. Just look how quickly DoH is being rolled out, or Google's QUIC. Realistically if Google, Mozilla, Cloudflare, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others agree that this move is bad, and wanted to stand up a new .org TLD...they could, and I don't believe it'd be illegal (IANAL).
    - zokier 7y ago
      Web is only small part of internet
      - nsomaru 7y ago
        Yes, but most of the internet is exposed to users via the web anyways. OSs would need to follow suit, sure — to make everything that’s not a browser work so that the alternative lookup mechanism is used instead of traditional DNS. How long do you think that would take? Not too long methinks.
walrus01 7y ago
Some further background on what happened. I don't see how this can be interpreted as anything other than corruption, plain and simple. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s... "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. As such it appears that the plan to purchase the .org registry was predicated on the price caps going ahead and that those behind the deal had intricate knowledge of ICANN’s internal processes."
- mehhh 7y ago
  The whole deal smells of self dealing, why was Ethos Capital selected to buy the .org registry versus an open bidding process?
- tldmanagement 7y ago
  Posting from a throwaway account. I worked at one of the main TLDs for years and was on one of the ICANN boards and got to know the industry well. It is well know amongst the domain name community that ICANN is a poorly run organization, whose directors have in recent years have used their position of leadership to lead decisions from which they are afterwards benefiting themselves economically, in many cases by rushing decisions such as in these case. Peter Dengate Thrush was famous for pushing for the new domain extensions (.anything) as chief executive of ICANN and quitting a month later to become the CEO for a company that was the main bidder for a large number of extensions. Fadi Chehade is doing the same with .ORG by lifting the price cap on the prices of an established domain name and then gobbling up the company that sells those domains. Sadly, ICANN has little oversight and since its kind of in the air and doesn’t report to anyone, the directors get away with what would be legally considered corruption in most of the world. The fact that the internet community and most Internet companies have never care about it makes doesn’t help, since a lot or times the “multistakeholder” model that they claim to use in reality doesn’t work. Ultimately, this is why the DNS and domain name industry feels so shady in general and why for most companies getting a name on the internet is a tortuous process that feels very scammy, which is unfair and costs more than it probably should. But so far we don’t have any good alternatives to the current system.
parhamn 7y ago
Is $10 the magic number for 'orgs'? Say the PE raised it to $20, how bad would that be? If it were $5 and doubled to $10 still as bad? Why is $10 the just amount? What about orgs that can't afford that? How high is it ok for the PE to go on fees? Why? (Tone is to point out how arbitrary this all is, genuinely curious otherwise)
- dpau 7y ago
  Given the history of private equity in hiking up drug prices, I'm guessing the answer to "what is the magic number" is whatever number generates the most profit, regardless of what is just or whether small organizations can afford it.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  They can raise it as high as they want. Yes, it is bad.
- rocqua 7y ago
  They can hike without limit, and they can target the hike. So they could make wikipedia pay 10000 a year when they need to renew. If they had all domains at the same price, price hikes would be much less of an issue.
ddingus 7y ago
There is no added value to justify doing this to .org. It is rent seeking.
jnwatson 7y ago
I happen to live down the street from the Internet Society. What could I do in person to emphasize the point?
- thepete2 7y ago
  paint something with chalk on the pavement before their entrance? Harmless and gets attention
  - orthecreedence 7y ago
    "greed.org"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tottenhm 7y ago
I think it's fair to see private equity as red-flag, and I feel ideologically aligned with the folks raising the alarm here. OTOH, the concerns raised include a lot of speculation (in the form of "could do bad" or "has the power to do bad"), and that's also a red-flag. It's interesting to compare ISOC's blog (https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/11/the-internet-society-and-public-interest-registry-a-new-era-of-opportunity/ https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/11/the-internet-so...) and the followups like EFF's blog (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-st...) and SaveDotORG (https://savedotorg.org https://savedotorg.org). They touch on a lot of similar themes of community and transparency - which, on paper, makes it sound like there's some meeting-ground. As an outsider to the discussion, questions would be: 1. What are some specific problems facing the ".org" registration process for which capital/investment would be helpful? (Obviously, there's no perfect answer. But as an outsider, it looks like ".org" registration already works about as well as anywhere else, so one needs some examples to animate the problem.) 2. Would any of these folks care to improve their engagement/trust with each other? Talking more specifics about "Stewardship Council" and "Community Enablement Fund" might help. Or is some reason for bad blood? 3. What kind of track record does this private-equity shop have? Have they worked with other non-profit or socially-oriented endeavors? Maybe some founders/staff/customers can give some positive or negative testimonials?
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  A downed power line or gas leak only "could" do bad, but that's not a reason to dismiss them.
- dogecoinbase 7y ago
  the concerns raised include a lot of speculation (in the form of "could do bad" or "has the power to do bad"), and that's also a red-flag. I'm not really sure how to address the idea that we shouldn't attempt to understand and interpret what things happening now might mean for the future.
  - ohashi 7y ago
carapace 7y ago
As if this couldn't get crazier: > Goldman Sachs & Co LLC. is serving as financial adviser to both the Internet Society and PIR. https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/11/15/reston-operator-of-org-domain-sells-to-private.html https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/11/15/resto...
- koheripbal 7y ago
  This is what they do - finance deals. This is as notable as saying Wells Fargo issued their home mortgage.
  - carapace 7y ago
    Wells Fargo, eh? Your example is apt, but perhaps not for the reason you intended (unless you're making a subtle joke, in which case I apologize for not catching it.) > This timeline charts the most significant events in the sales scandal that erupted at Wells Fargo [in 2016] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/24/a-timeline-of-wells-fargos-sales-scandal.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/24/a-timeline-of-well... > Wells Fargo(WFC)charged customers a monthly service fee to maintain a checking account that many customers assumed was free and the bank is mulling how to respond to people who feel cheated, according to the bank and sources familiar with the accounts. https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wells-Fargo-2019.08.28.pdf https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wells... > Wells Fargo and an insurance company it worked with have agreed to pay $432 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by customers who say they were charged premiums for auto insurance they did not need. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article237666879.html https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article237666879.... IMO only fools and masochists would continue to bank with Wells Fargo. Anyhow, Goldman Sachs have no business being anywhere near DNS or ".org" at all, at all. They're a bunch of crooks who make Monty Burns look sympathetic in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies_and_legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies_an...
- harry8 7y ago
  Whenever there are politicans robbing those who they claim to serve, Goldmans are there advising anc charging huge fees. Whether it is this, Greece debt, 1MDB in Malaysia. Goldmans have no regard for their own reputation so we should assume anytime Goldman are advisors that the deal is a massive ripoff for which people should be going to jail. Goldmans may not have always been this way but they sure are now! They're a leading indicator of gross corruption.
foxhop 7y ago
I think I give up on the Internet that we know today. I'm too tired to fight anymore. Monopoly ISPs with data caps, DNS rent seeking, the walled gardens, the internet of shit where I cannot walk down my street without getting recorded by every house with a "ring". I'm done with it. I don't want to partake anymore, I don't want to fight it anymore, I don't want to care anymore. Let the Google's and Facebook's have the old Internet. I'm done with it. The dream is over. The magic is gone for me. The old Internet is gone. Let them have the rest. Maybe then, and only then we will rise up like a Phoenix, with a solution that cannot be stolen out from under us.
- kotrunga 7y ago
  Ah man.... the exhaustion I feel... is summed up so well by this comment.
- askafriend 7y ago
  > stolen out from under us. Who is "us"? The internet is available to more people in more countries than ever before. There's more content on the internet than ever before. It's a part of every day life for nearly everyone in the world. That's what's happening to the internet. It's no longer a corner where quirky tinkerers were the only ones who could access it. And the promise of the internet was never to be just that. It was meant to be a vehicle for humanity (along with all it's warts). That's what you're seeing. The rest of humanity coming on-line. The attitude of "this isn't what it was meant to be" presumes that it was meant to be anything at all. Similar to a kid that doesn't want to share their legos with the rest of the class.
  - foxhop 7y ago
    They can have my last two Legos, these blocks are no longer useful to me. They already have most of the blocks under their control anyways.
  - brianshaler 7y ago
    I think the sentiment was regarding the democratization of knowledge and access, which is shifting more toward an oligarchy. True, more of humanity is coming online. However, they can only participate if they can be monetized and controlled by those with all the wealth and power.
exegete 7y ago
I can’t visit the site. First there’s an SSL cert problem and when I bypass that Verizon blocks it as malware.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  What SSL cert are you seeing? The site seems fine to me, and the SSLLabs check looks fine. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=savedotorg.org https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=savedotorg.or...
  - exegete 7y ago
    I think the cert issue is because of DNS hijacking by my ISP so that they can (falsely) tell me the site has malware. I can’t view the cert now that I’ve made an exception to it.
- codemati 7y ago
  Not sure why this is getting downvotes. I'm seeing the same - Chrome blocks it, then my work VPN does, with the following error: "This site is blocked due to a security threat that was discovered by the Cisco Umbrella security researchers."
- pizza 7y ago
  Same here, cisco firewall blocked it
vkaku 7y ago
Done. I own a org site myself.
vkaku 7y ago
I also think ICANN is a very corrupt entity now, with very bad governance at the moment.
celeritascelery 7y ago
Watch the new private group that controls .org revoke their right to this domain.
swsieber 7y ago
Time to have a collectively funded .ngo TLD?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ohashi 7y ago
  Already owned by PIR (which runs .ORG and is being sold to Ethos Capital). Sorry, it's a group domain fucking. You're welcome - Ethos Capital, probably.
guywithahat 7y ago
> This article was brought to you by the domain squatters lobby But seriously I don’t see what’s wrong with this sale. There are no restrictions on who can use a .org domain anyways, and the only people price increases really affect are domain squatters (real organizations can afford 10x the current price without batting an eye). I don’t see what’s wrong with this sale
- csixty4 7y ago
  What exactly are "real organizations"? I can think of two long-lived NFPs in my life that can barely afford hosting & domain registration right now.
jhales 7y ago
Is it okay for startups not based in the `British Indian Ocean Territory` to use `.io` for their domain?
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Yes. Why shouldn’t it be? I genuinely don’t understand your argument.
- simias 7y ago
  It's up to the registrar to make the rules. If nic.io is fine with people outside of that territory to use their tld then it's okay. Some TLDs do indeed have stronger requirements. I remember that for a long time getting a .fr was a bit of a pain because you had to prove that you were a french citizen or a french company IIRC.
shotashotshota 7y ago
I don't understand why everything must "grow and adapt ...". Can't something just stop evolving? Its not like its failing or something, we don't need everything to do everything just be good - very good - at what you do.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_qhtn 7y ago
Where should I mail a bomb?
- dang 7y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - sgt 7y ago
    Seems like he posted a lame joke. The appropriate response would be for other users to downvote him. I've seen his other comments and he'll regularly be downvoted, but I think you're overreacting a bit. Perhaps you should stick to making sure HN runs, and aside from that mind your own business?
    - dang 7y ago
      Note that word 'repeatedly'. When people post like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958824 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20902321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20902321 and ignore our requests to stop breaking the guidelines, we ban them. If we didn't, the guidelines wouldn't mean much. Sadly, it's my business to deal with flamewars, personal attacks, trolling, and other abuses of HN. If flames are allowed to burn this place to a crisp, HN won't be HN anymore. And eventually there wouldn't be anything worth running or anyone to run it for.
      - sgt 7y ago
        I've gone through some more of his comments and found that you were absolutely justified. Sorry for my remark.
        _qhtn 7y ago
        which?
0xcde4c3db 7y ago
I've always been a bit confused by the relationships among government agencies, ICANN, IANA, the registry-operating entities, etc., and this site doesn't seem to explain why the CEO of the Internet Society is the right person to appeal to. Can anyone point to an explanation that summarizes the overall flow of authorities and obligations involved here?
- ohashi 7y ago
  Only entities who could stop this, ICANN (this is being pulled off by insiders including former ICANN CEO). Internet Society - they did this deal in the first place. And... who the hell knows? Could the US Government step in? Maybe? They stepped back during Obama admin, I'm not a lawyer but someone needs to step up and I've lost faith in both ICANN and Internet Society.
TomMckenny 7y ago
It's amazing that .org avoided some powerful group injecting themselves as rent seekers even this long. It's a pity we've decided to run society this way generally.
ur-whale 7y ago
One more argument for taking out name-to-IP translation entirely out of "managing organizations" and moving it onto a fully decentralized blockchain.
devit 7y ago
How about getting the browser and OS makers together to use an alternate DNS system? It only needs Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft to agree and ICANN can be made irrelevant overnight.
- rocqua 7y ago
  Where do we put the DNS root then? If you want oversight and international consensus it cannot be placed within a country. Only option I see is to put it under the UN but that will probably ramp up the politics.
  - rapnie 7y ago
    Yes, have 'access to the internet' a universal human right and a UN body to work towards that goal, managing domains.
- hk__2 7y ago
  > It only needs Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft to agree and ICANN can be made irrelevant overnight. Of course not. The Web is only a small part of the Internet. DNS is used by way more services than Web browsers.
  - kijin 7y ago
    The aforementioned companies make more than web browsers. They make entire operating systems. If an OS changes how it interfaces with DNS, it will affect every service that runs on the OS. To be honest I don't see this happening any time soon with the major commercial OSes. But in Linux you can install some programs to e.g. send all your DNS queries through a certain encrypted tunnel, and nearly every application installed on that box will happily use that tunnel.
  - Brian_K_White 7y ago
    But the value of preserving your existing address exactly, including .org on the end, mostly only exists in browsers, where humans find things initially. Actually, I bet by now it doesn't even matter that much even there any more. Consider how the search in google already forms an effective alternative dns for many actual humans attempting to manually go somewhere. If you have a .org domain, you can change all the non-browser uses of the domain pretty easily. The tools in the background of things don't care what the names are. You can change them and it's really not that much of a disruption. Once someone finds your site, via their browser, you can populate that site with whatever kinds of urls and directions and references you want. Just like no one really cares how ugly and long all the urls to actual things other than the front page are. Your site can include say, the directions to access your API, and those directions don't have to say foo.org in them. Even existing api users that break if you have to change your name, can react to that change easily enough. Email is probably the biggest problem. We will all simply have to never pin too much dependency on any single email address. But we already have to do that, so no loss. If you had set up your own domain so you weren't at the mercy of google killing your gmail account and killing your ability to prove ownership of everything else in your life, well you would just need to have more than one email registered with everything like paypal etc. So me@mydomain.org can break and you don't die from it. You just better realize your domain is going to break and unregister those emails everywhere before it goes into someone else's hands. Because when someone else owns a domain, then they can receive all emails sent to any name at that domain, including "reset password" mails. It's not the most fun passtime, but it's not necessarily the end of the world either. It really is human interactive web browser usage where the exact name matters most. So if cloudflare and google simply sent browsers to the right place and ignored the traditional root authority for .org, or any other name lookup, that would pretty much be good enough. Google could do it already without even violating dns just through search results.
shakethemonkey 7y ago
Is there a reason why price caps on .org can't be restored?
patrickdavey 7y ago
This is just awful. For everyone wondering "how bad can it really be?", they can put whatever cost they like to keep your domain registered. I have a small carpooling site for ski fields in New Zealand - snowpool.org . I've run this for 10 years, as a fun side project. If they hike the fees to 3K a year (or whatever) then there's just no way I'd keep it going. I've have to migrate somewhere else, which would be a complete pain in the ass. I find it just awfully sad (and probably corrupt) that this happened at all, and I really hope there's some higher authority that can roll this back - or at minimum bring back the price-cap. Very sad times.
- Ayesh 7y ago
  This is the case for all new gTLDs. .pro to .xyz to . accountant, the registry can put any price, be it zero or a million dollars.
  - patrickdavey 7y ago
    Sure, but, people went into those domains _knowing_ that was the case. .org started with a price cap and I for one thought it would stay that way.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    .com has price caps. Imagine what happens when they remove those and they can just price everyone out of their .com names, names they may have had for 25+ years. Imagine a world where whomever has the most money can control your brand. What happens when McDonalds buys the Burger King brand because BK was priced out? .com, .org, and .net are long standing shared resources that should not have unlimited prices. They should be capped forever.
    - hrktb 7y ago
      McDonalds and Burger King can duke it in court. It will be more site the kind of wikileaks that could get effectively removed without having to go legal routes. Just have your friends price them out of their domains. Nobody needs to even buy the domains, they just need to be expensive enough to stay unused.
Iv 7y ago
It is OpenNIC you need to petition, so that they accept to cause a schism on the .org TLD
axaxs 7y ago
Based on my limited interaction with the fellow it's addressed to: a complete knob, wasting your breath.
reenaguptadel 7y ago
Thank you and good luck https://www.anjali-khanna.in/ https://www.anjali-khanna.in/
squeezingswirls 7y ago
I fully support any campaign against the .org TLD hijacking but it would be good to know who's behind that savedotorg.org domain name. A whois search gives me 'Registrant Organization: Data Protected'. I'd like to know to whom are we giving our email addresses, and what are they going to do with them?
- SyneRyder 7y ago
  That could be due to GDPR. Some European registry companies believe GDPR makes the collection and publishing of WHOIS data illegal. ICANN is currently suing a Tucows company in Germany [1] over their refusal to comply with WHOIS data collection, and ICANN published a Temporary Specification that allows/requires every other registry to hide WHOIS data globally pending the result of the GDPR court case [2]. Of course, that doesnt prevent savedotorg.org from posting their own "About Us" webpage explaining who they are. [1] https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2018-05-25-en https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2018-05-25-en [2] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data-specs-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data...
  - squeezingswirls 7y ago
    Yes, an "About Us" page should be included on that site at least. AFAIK GDPR protects personal data only, so if the savedotorg.org registrant is an entity of any kind then it shouldn't be any problem publishing that info.
    - squeezingswirls 7y ago
      They've added an "About this site" page now. As I can't edit my previous comment, I'll add the link here https://savedotorg.org/index.php/about/ https://savedotorg.org/index.php/about/
NickNameNick 7y ago
At what point does the internet community simply decide to fork the DNS root? I know it's a management nightmare, but the existence of an alternate root would put a cap on the value of the existing one.
- simlevesque 7y ago
  https://www.opennic.org https://www.opennic.org
fwxwi 7y ago
Can't, like... the biggest DNS servers of the world just turn their backs to the current management of .org and delegate that power to another entity?
tobias3 7y ago
As a plan B. Is there any top level domain run by a non-profit where I can switch to long term?
- teddyh 7y ago
  If you mostly trust your local government, perhaps your national ccTLD would be fine?
  - tobias3 7y ago
    Hmm, in my case this would be .de/DENIC. Seems to be organized as a cooperative with those members: https://www.denic.de/en/about-denic/members/member-list/ https://www.denic.de/en/about-denic/members/member-list/ So not very promising. But .eu/EURid seems to be a non-profit.
gorgoiler 7y ago
Is there an effective direct action that can shake ICANN into some sense? I don’t mean this as a serious suggestion, but as an example we could have a “drop dot org” month where resolvers refuse to forward queries to the ORG nameservers. Not a great example because it would have a pretty negative impact on the domain holders, and no impact on ICANN. Can anyone think of a better example, equivalent to saying to ICANN “if you go ahead with this then we’re going to boycott dot org in a way that makes it worthless”?
- liveoneggs 7y ago
  Why do the resolvers need to follow what ICANN says to use for .org? They could revolt if coordinated
arminiusreturns 7y ago
When I ranted about how the transfer of DNS power under the Obama admin was a bad idea and stuff like this would happen I got called a crazy conspiracy theorist... I'm getting really tired of being right about bad things, the "I told you so" is very hollow.
r721 7y ago
Related discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779
damm 7y ago
If everything is as corrupt as some throwaway states why build a new domain registration system more free and open? I know it's work however if done right (or better) a .org should be low cost for a NGO and how about a decent non profit tld so they could have it lower cost or free? Sure it sounds hard but the automation and handling enrolling new domains is the real work
bouger 7y ago
Perhaps the most likely way to stop the sale would be to make a competing offer and outbid Ethos.
phantom_oracle 7y ago
I mentioned in my last comment about this being outright corruption by the Americans involved. Now it is time to mention the 1 positive that the USA has that other countries(visibly) don't: > The willingness and ability to sue as a collective .org is a domain used by everyone from Wikipedia, UN, Debian and your national dog shelter. Private Equity cares only about one thing: making money. Anybody with a toe in the finance world knows that these are the same people that will do "hostile takeovers" to strip companies of their assets, pile on debt and push out a sale. A class-action lawsuit targeting the PE firm(or parties involved in the sale of .org) and then pushing your State Attorneys to investigate these corrupt individuals at a personal level will have the desired effect that appeals to the moral high-ground won't.
- kijin 7y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. Letters like this only work for congresspeople, and even then only some of the time. For everyone else, lawsuits, injunctions, and criminal investigations are much more effective deterrents.
chmaynard 7y ago
Has anyone checked to see how many for-profit corporate websites are using .org? My favorite example is coursera.org.
ccvannorman 7y ago
TLDR: "Dear Mr Andrew Sullivan, even though you already had extensive meetings and plans to sell and you are fully aware of the damage you'll cause, and have decided instead to take the money and run, please reconsider." Why would someone so greedy and tone deaf possibly give a damn about such a letter? He's walking away a rich man and he already made his choice fully knowing. If you want to Save .org, abolish ICANN. It's time to take our medicine, ICANN with no oversight has predictably led us to an internet controlled by greed and corruption of a few wealthy elite. Appealing to the greedy will get us nowhere. We need to seize power, not to plead.
yabadabadoes 7y ago
I think it is possible to do a "name drop" similar to a coin drop and either change the accepted ending for .org or remove ICANN's authority over namespace altogether.. One issue might be creating an acceptable authority for certificate registrar's, so let's encrypt has an explanation of what domains it confirms and how if not via the ICANN derived path.
Brian_K_White 7y ago
Why can't we simply configure clients to use a phonebook we like, rather than the phonebook we don't like? Today, it's relatively easy to create something like a piece of software and a db of alternative roots. And any clients which have that kit installed are suddenly simply ignoring pieces of what the traditional roots say. Yes it would be fractured for a while. But it's no worse than say, dns over https, and the way say, you can't reach archive.is while your browser is using doh, but can when you turn doh off. (unless they finally fixed that, but that was the situation for a ridiculously long time after both cloudflare and archive.is were made aware.) We already have such things today, so might as well employ it as well as suffer it.
- robbya 7y ago
  As a website owner, how do I track down all the alternate roots I'd need to register with? If each of those charge a fee, how much will I need to spend on each root? If I need to perform an OPS task like flipping to a new external load balancer IP, how many alternate robots do I need to coordinate with, and how much testing do I need to verify each root is updated?
unityByFreedom 7y ago
Have to wonder if this campaign is just going to increase its value further. Is .org really a valid way to verify legitimacy of a non-governmental organization? Should we be looking for another solution here or is this the right hill to die on?
diminish 7y ago
Icannn is a corrupt organization as anyone inside knows.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
This been in the making since the start of the year: https://www.namecheap.com/blog/keep-domain-prices-in-check/ https://www.namecheap.com/blog/keep-domain-prices-in-check/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bi6gg5/help_keep_domain_prices_in_check/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bi6gg5/help_ke... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19769952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19769952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19752425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19752425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19747512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19747512
jacob-malthouse 7y ago
Did a podcast explainer on this here: https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/152-why-we-should-save-org-domains/ https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/152-why-we-should-save-or...
bbanyc 7y ago
In 1998 Jon Postel briefly "hijacked" the DNS root zone. Formal control over DNS had always belonged to the US government, but Postel commanded such universal respect from the internet community that they were willing to follow him, as head of IANA, over the government contractor that "officially" ran the root at the time. This of course is why ICANN was created, to bring governance of the Internet closer to the community that developed and maintained it. But now ICANN has become just as remote and unaccountable as the bureaucrats and contractors it replaced. And Postel is long gone, and the Internet community has grown so big and fragmented that no one person will ever have anywhere near the towering position he once did. So now what do we do?
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Except at least the American bureaucrats were accountable to the Department of Commerce, and ultimately elected officials. ICANN is accountable to nobody, whatsoever, in any capacity.
  - bbanyc 7y ago
    Wilbur Ross is even less trustworthy than ICANN. Which is saying something.
  - pas 7y ago
    ICANN members are not powerless, even if organizing and kicking ICANN out is a lot of work.
jacob-malthouse 7y ago
savedotorg.org campaign now over 6000 letters in under 36 hours. over 200k visits.
mikedilger 7y ago
Existing .org domains they can't move without overwhelming disruption, so most will just pay whatever it costs. But for the future, we need to move the Internet towards having peering relationships with TLDs such as OpenNIC.net. Motivations: * This issue of .org being sold for profit * The fact that OpenNIC had to rename their TLD domains (e.g. .free to .libre) when ICANN created a colliding .free domain, demonstrating clearly that they are not peers. Internet technologies such as browsers and operating systems should recognize ICANN and OpenNIC roots as peers, with DNSSEC to both. Should ICANN decide to create a .libre domain, existing browsers and operating systems should consider it a DNS attack and not recognize it. I think an organization like Mozilla ought to (1) flesh out any technical challenges, (2) support OpenNIC and (3) push for this.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  OpenNIC is a poorly managed amateur project, built on shoddy infrastructure that was thrown together in the early 2000s -- it's completely incapable of acting as any kind of peer to the ICANN root. In particular: - Their resolvers are not consistently available. Many of them are hosted on public cloud hosts (which also raises some questions about their security), and outages are not uncommon. - It's not clear that they support DNSSEC, or that they have any plan to do so. - The governance of the OpenNIC-specific zones that they offer is even shoddier than the DNS root itself. Most of them have no registry/registrar distinction, no domain transfer process, no WHOIS services, and sketchy to nonexistent abuse policies. - Since OpenNIC TLDs cannot be resolved on the public Internet, it's impossible to issue a SSL certificate for one.
  - mikedilger 7y ago
    Most of your points are valid. That's why I'm suggesting Mozilla support it. It would be a lot less "shoddy" if someone shepherded it. I think it is the right idea. The last point is only true because they aren't recognized, which recognition would immediately fix, therefore it is moot.
    - duskwuff 7y ago
mikorym 7y ago
> the sale of .ORG Wait, what???
EETruth 7y ago
Reading the names of the people involved I'm not surprised that there's corruption...
sambe 7y ago
I guess it makes sense to renew now for as many years as you can?
joecool1029 7y ago
I've found it curious that while there's a relationship to trademark for US domains (the .com/.org/.net ones) in anti-cybersquatting law and UDRP, the USPTO doesn't have a mechanism to tie a domain to a mark. This would be useful if we could register our marks and tie it to a domain, along with the standard application fee. At least for certain TLD's (.com would be a good candidate). FWIW, I have a long history of dragging registrars through the mud to get clients' domains back. As of this time, I am in a dispute with GoDaddy over a domain that was deleted because GoDaddy sells a 'business registration' service. My client renewed this thinking it was for his expired domain, GoDaddy updated the WHOIS nameserver records and the site came back online. 45 days after the initial expiration GoDaddy dropped the domain without notice and a broker picked it up. I can't even go through UDRP on this because the client never registered their trademark.
Razengan 7y ago
Half-baked idea for an alternative to domains: Let every site have a UUID, kinda like TOR addresses, and let the host/servers as well as users specify multiple human-readable shortcuts for that UUID. So HN might get o4u20j4c9qwybv3u0p2hnxjq4k1n4vmcsvtvm2666kjn123 and no other site should ever get the same ID until the heat death of the universe, and you could access it by any name you want. Something like that would be resilient to impersonation, takeovers, brand renaming, and other issues.
- PostOnce 7y ago
  you're describing ip addresses and domain names
  - Razengan 7y ago
    I'm talking about something akin to onion addresses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion
christopoulos 7y ago
Could we include .book while we’re at it? Seems like the handling of that TLD went really wrong...
danyork 7y ago
For more information about this transaction, please see this post from one of the Internet Society Board of Trustees members who voted for the sale (as did they all unanimously) - Why I Voted to Sell .ORG - http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_org/ http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_o...
jacob-malthouse 7y ago
ISOC CEO does not consider the public reaction or petition significant. He stated that a mere 10,000 signatures when there are millions of .orgs indicates lack of public concern or any serious opposition to the deal. Ethos Capital paid $1.135 billion for total, unconditional, purchase of the PIR from ISOC. ISOC just "grabbed the opportunity when Ethos presented it," ISOC have reviewed Ethos’s governance plans and approved them, but will have no means to enforce compliance with those plans. The deal must be approved by the end of the 1st Quarter 2021 or it fails. The exact date is still confidential. It must be approved by two bodies – ICANN and the Pennsylvania Orphans Court, which is a specialist court for estates and trusts. The PIR is incorporated in Pennsylvania and this court must approve changes in the PIR charter in order for Ethos Capital to take ownership. This is because “the Orphans’ Court judge is the ultimate defender and protector of the fund in question, and the Orphans’ Court will protect that fund and ensure that the fund is distributed to the correct beneficiary” There is a good introduction to this court at https://www.skhlaw.com/pennsylvania-orphans-court-101-all-the-basics-you-need-to-know-before-venturing-in/ https://www.skhlaw.com/pennsylvania-orphans-court-101-all-th... This means that if the Pennsylvania Orphans Court has not reached a determination by 1st April next year, or if that decision is being challenged in a manner which delays implementation, the deal fails.
- dang 7y ago
  You've created multiple accounts just to post on this issue. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, and neither is using the site for political battle, even on an issue where the community is largely in agreement. Could you please take a look at this reply I posted to your other account? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660175 You're certainly welcome to participate as a community member, which means following the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using the site as intended, for intellectual curiosity. But it's not ok to use it as a platform for a cause, no matter how good a cause it may be. Also, please don't copy/paste comments here. That lowers signal/noise ratio and breaks the site guidelines, which call for curious conversation.
  - 7y ago

Save .org

2297 points by jaden 7y ago

netfl0 7y ago

Does any one have a source for the rationale behind the sale? I was surprised it was even considered.

visiblink 7y ago
Read this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s... It appears to be a corrupt inside job.
- netfl0 7y ago
  Wow, despicable. Thank you.

jdkee 7y ago

Again why does ISOC feel they have to do this? Are they starved for funding? This sale directly contravenes several of the founding ideals of the Internet.

ohashi 7y ago
Why did it happen entirely behind closed doors? No way they got this deal together just after price caps were removed. Was this orchestrated beforehand? Domain registrations for Ethos Capital pre-date the change and timing coincides with proposed contract change to remove price caps. What does Andrew Sullivan get for this move? Is Jon Nevett connected as well considering his ties to Donuts which is connected to Abry Partners which was managed by now Ethos Capital CEO? So many questions, all this happening in shadows means we shouldn't give any benefit of the doubt.

chrisblackwell 7y ago

People. We are losing the Internet that we all love and care for so deeply. We all need to rise up to fight for the freedom the Internet gives us.

davidu 7y ago

This is essentially a hijacking of the DNS as far as I’m concerned. The sale of .org is heinous; And I’m an unabashed capitalist. There is absolutely nothing defensible about this move that I can see. Is there any argument that this is beneficial to anyone except Ethos and Internet Society? Is it even clear they have the right to sell it? Has every person at ISOC submitted conflict statements? Are they willing to commit to never benefit financially from Ethos controlled entities for 10+ years?

Proven 7y ago
> The sale of .org is heinous; And I’m an unabashed capitalist. It's fascist, if anything. The system was built by governments and government organizations. It is operated (milked) by the private sector. There are hundreds of crypto currencies. Each works well for someone, some work great for many. All are private. A capitalist DNS system could work without state interference.
3xblah 7y ago
"This is essentially a hijacking of the DNS as far as I'm concerned." At the last NANOG, the keynote speaker described three instances where companies have "hijacted" the DNS. https://blog.apnic.net/2019/11/04/dns-wars/ https://blog.apnic.net/2019/11/04/dns-wars/ The first "hijack" was Versisign wildcarding unregistered .com and .net domains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder). The second was OpenDNS redirecting Google searches to an OpenDNS proxy (http://web.archive.org/web/20120518025819/http://www.opendns.com:80/support/article/111 http://web.archive.org/web/20120518025819/http://www.opendns...).[1] The third is the EDNS client subnet extension.[2] 1. Acording to the keynote this led to the creation of Google Public DNS "within 45 days". 2. If I am not mistaken, OpenDNS was an early proponent of EDNS client subnet adoption.

danielfoster 7y ago

The entire domain system is a racket.

byuu 7y ago
It always astounded me that for the longest time until only recently, you were expected to pay additional money, more than the domain cost itself, for HTTPS security (and if you wanted a wildcard certificate, substantially more money.) I guess when the gTLD explosion didn't result in massive new profits for the new TLDs (some are $100+/year!), the powers that be decided to focus on existing TLDs instead where there's extensive decades-long lock-in effects at play. No one needed company-name.ninja, but good luck giving up your company-name.org to a squatter or worse, your competition.

koolba 7y ago

How much does it actually cost to run a TLD? Even with the usual governmental bureaucracy overhead I bet it’s be a rounding error. Seems a good fit for something like the UN to take over.

greggman2 7y ago
No! I agree with you that it seems like it should be cheap but imagine the UN ran it. China would veto ".tw" as just one example of the many problems with government type entity in charge.
- ohashi 7y ago
  Now China can simply buy Ethos Capital and run it. It's way cheaper than the UN.
  - greggman2 7y ago
    I'm not arguing having Ethos Capital is good. I'm arguing the UN running it is not a solution. (nor any likely government body for that matter who will likely take down any organization they don't agree with)

jonah-archive 7y ago

A couple additional things: EFF blog post on the topic: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-st... Here's the initial letter being sent from EFF & others to ICANN and the Internet Society: https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-interest-registry https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-in... (Disclaimer: I work for the Internet Archive, and we are one of the initial signatories to this letter.)

DarkmSparks 7y ago
Thank you and good luck.
cobookman 7y ago
Has the broader group thought about just buying their own tld? With a better governance model.
- ohashi 7y ago
  Would it matter? You're already locked into years, maybe decades, of brand building. You'd still need to redirect your old .org indefinitely. .ORG should be properly managed and regulated, we shouldn't need to attempt to rebuild something because ICANN is corrupt and Internet Society is selling out non profits they promised to serve.
  - jlokier 7y ago
    Not just brand building. How many accounts are linked to your email, and how many of us have had that email on a .org for 10, 20, even 30 years in some cases. Do you even know how many accounts have that email address as either the primary, or backup/recovery email? An email address is central to identity management these days. Lose a long established domain, and you might lose access to most of your other internet accounts, especially the ones you don't use every day and are hard to remember.

hliyan 7y ago

This feels unreal! How is this even happening? Domains are more like the airwaves than a commercial product. How can they do this??

behringer 7y ago
Just wait until you see what they have planned for the airwaves next!
- umanwizard 7y ago
  TBH I’d be happy for the (AM/FM radio) airwaves to be privatized if it meant getting rid of the absurd, antiquated rules about not being able to say certain words in song lyrics.
  - kdtsh 7y ago
    That shouldn’t be necessary though, better regulation of a limited resource is preferable to no regulation.
  - Brian_K_White 7y ago
    That problem is microscopic compared to the problems you would invite. Bad at math.
  - anticensor 7y ago
    Anyone freely interfering at high power would be dangerous for everyone.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    It doesn't actually mean that. Look at censorship that Facebook implements for an example of what you can expect. Sure, there might be some obscure stations that wouldn't have such rules... and nobody would know about them.

jolmg 7y ago

Lots of distros are in .org aren't they? I see Arch, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Centos, OpenSuse, Raspbian, Damn Small Linux, Linux From Scratch, NixOS, Guix, OpenWRT, PfSense, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, Illumos, and probably lots, lots more. GNU is also on .org. Also languages, at least Python, Ruby, Haskell, Rust, Go, Clojure, Racket, Zsh, etc. .org seems to be the go-to TLD for open source projects.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
".org" is almost the standard for all community projects, there will be huge impact if the management went wrong.
- yuz 7y ago
  What will be the impact?
  - patrickdavey 7y ago
    I run a tiny carpooling site (not for profit) snowpool.org . If they turned around and upped the fees to 3K a year or something, it would basically force me to shut the service down. This is an incredibly awful move, I'm completely astounded that it was allowed to happen.
    - chii 7y ago
      if there's money to doing something, it will happen. Why not just move to a different domain, and while your old one is still "cheap", do a redirect etc?
      - patrickdavey 7y ago
        Because I've built up a presence over 10 years of running the site, so, I'm not just about to move! It'd be a huge pain to move probably hundreds of email addresses over to a new domain etc too (I sign up with [domain]@snowpool.org) It completely depends on what they do, I've renewed for 10 years so I have time now, if they put the fees to >500 a year then I'll definitely move. Do you own a domain yourself that people have been using for 10 years? You might feel differently about the ease of "just moving"

partiallypro 7y ago

Serious question, what are the actual downsides of this, if any? Or is the backlash due to the "private equity" being associated with evil? Doesn't seem like anything is actually changing other than who issues .org?

yumraj 7y ago
Evil or not, Private equity by definition is focused on maximizing profit. You can do the math.
thenewnewguy 7y ago
Serious question, did you even read the page? Specifically, the part where it makes specific complaints about the 2019 .org registry agreement, such as the ability to raise registration fees without ICANN approval?
- partiallypro 7y ago
  So it goes up by $1 or $15, how does that hurt non-profits? They aren't going to out price other TLDs, the market isn't that elastic.
  - robjan 7y ago
    If you have already owned your .org, have used it in publicity materials, use it for all of your emails etc. then yes you are pretty much stuck with that domain no matter how much they jack up the price. So the domain is inelastic, that is a change in price will not significantly change demand for those who already own them.
    - techsupporter 7y ago
      Exactly. As a community, we have routinely given the advice to “own your identity” by buying a domain. Since most of the good com domains are long bought, someone newer to the internet is likely to have looked at org. If someone took us up on our advice in, say, 2014 that means that he or she has had a domain for five years. Five years to integrate that into a life in various ways, remembered or not. And now, that thing could cost $75/year with no recourse. Then there are people like me. My org domain is so old it can legally drink and soon be able to run for Congress. What is it worth to me? $200/year? $500? $1,000? I don’t know and it sucks to have to consider yet another astoundingly high cost of “living” in a world that keeps going up in cost.

windexh8er 7y ago

I've been thinking a lot about the sheer downsides of DNS overall. We need something different. Something decentralized, encrypted, something not reliant on a protocol that hasn't kept pace with security and privacy and we need something verifiable that provides accountability. As others have said TLDs have become a racket. Only the priveleged and nation states have the authority to use the system as a funnel of ridiculous revenue and rate manipulation. We don't need DNS anymore. It's become more of a lynchpin to bottleneck and advance control of the few and continues to erode our privacy as it stands today. What's next?

judge2020 7y ago
The problem is that DNS powers the internet as we know it, getting everything ever to switch over is at least another 30 years after you make a protocol (that would also need to have literally no downsides).
- cobookman 7y ago
  Not sure I agree. If FF & Chrome both supported it...it'd be in effect in < 5 years total. Just look how quickly DoH is being rolled out, or Google's QUIC. Realistically if Google, Mozilla, Cloudflare, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others agree that this move is bad, and wanted to stand up a new .org TLD...they could, and I don't believe it'd be illegal (IANAL).
  - zokier 7y ago
    Web is only small part of internet
    - nsomaru 7y ago
      Yes, but most of the internet is exposed to users via the web anyways. OSs would need to follow suit, sure — to make everything that’s not a browser work so that the alternative lookup mechanism is used instead of traditional DNS. How long do you think that would take? Not too long methinks.

walrus01 7y ago

Some further background on what happened. I don't see how this can be interpreted as anything other than corruption, plain and simple. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s... "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. As such it appears that the plan to purchase the .org registry was predicated on the price caps going ahead and that those behind the deal had intricate knowledge of ICANN’s internal processes."

mehhh 7y ago
The whole deal smells of self dealing, why was Ethos Capital selected to buy the .org registry versus an open bidding process?
tldmanagement 7y ago
Posting from a throwaway account. I worked at one of the main TLDs for years and was on one of the ICANN boards and got to know the industry well. It is well know amongst the domain name community that ICANN is a poorly run organization, whose directors have in recent years have used their position of leadership to lead decisions from which they are afterwards benefiting themselves economically, in many cases by rushing decisions such as in these case. Peter Dengate Thrush was famous for pushing for the new domain extensions (.anything) as chief executive of ICANN and quitting a month later to become the CEO for a company that was the main bidder for a large number of extensions. Fadi Chehade is doing the same with .ORG by lifting the price cap on the prices of an established domain name and then gobbling up the company that sells those domains. Sadly, ICANN has little oversight and since its kind of in the air and doesn’t report to anyone, the directors get away with what would be legally considered corruption in most of the world. The fact that the internet community and most Internet companies have never care about it makes doesn’t help, since a lot or times the “multistakeholder” model that they claim to use in reality doesn’t work. Ultimately, this is why the DNS and domain name industry feels so shady in general and why for most companies getting a name on the internet is a tortuous process that feels very scammy, which is unfair and costs more than it probably should. But so far we don’t have any good alternatives to the current system.

parhamn 7y ago

Is $10 the magic number for 'orgs'? Say the PE raised it to $20, how bad would that be? If it were $5 and doubled to $10 still as bad? Why is $10 the just amount? What about orgs that can't afford that? How high is it ok for the PE to go on fees? Why? (Tone is to point out how arbitrary this all is, genuinely curious otherwise)

dpau 7y ago
Given the history of private equity in hiking up drug prices, I'm guessing the answer to "what is the magic number" is whatever number generates the most profit, regardless of what is just or whether small organizations can afford it.
WilliamEdward 7y ago
They can raise it as high as they want. Yes, it is bad.
rocqua 7y ago
They can hike without limit, and they can target the hike. So they could make wikipedia pay 10000 a year when they need to renew. If they had all domains at the same price, price hikes would be much less of an issue.

ddingus 7y ago

There is no added value to justify doing this to .org. It is rent seeking.

jnwatson 7y ago

I happen to live down the street from the Internet Society. What could I do in person to emphasize the point?

thepete2 7y ago
paint something with chalk on the pavement before their entrance? Harmless and gets attention
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  "greed.org"

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tottenhm 7y ago

I think it's fair to see private equity as red-flag, and I feel ideologically aligned with the folks raising the alarm here. OTOH, the concerns raised include a lot of speculation (in the form of "could do bad" or "has the power to do bad"), and that's also a red-flag. It's interesting to compare ISOC's blog (https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/11/the-internet-society-and-public-interest-registry-a-new-era-of-opportunity/ https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/11/the-internet-so...) and the followups like EFF's blog (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-st...) and SaveDotORG (https://savedotorg.org https://savedotorg.org). They touch on a lot of similar themes of community and transparency - which, on paper, makes it sound like there's some meeting-ground. As an outsider to the discussion, questions would be: 1. What are some specific problems facing the ".org" registration process for which capital/investment would be helpful? (Obviously, there's no perfect answer. But as an outsider, it looks like ".org" registration already works about as well as anywhere else, so one needs some examples to animate the problem.) 2. Would any of these folks care to improve their engagement/trust with each other? Talking more specifics about "Stewardship Council" and "Community Enablement Fund" might help. Or is some reason for bad blood? 3. What kind of track record does this private-equity shop have? Have they worked with other non-profit or socially-oriented endeavors? Maybe some founders/staff/customers can give some positive or negative testimonials?

jimmaswell 7y ago
A downed power line or gas leak only "could" do bad, but that's not a reason to dismiss them.
dogecoinbase 7y ago
the concerns raised include a lot of speculation (in the form of "could do bad" or "has the power to do bad"), and that's also a red-flag. I'm not really sure how to address the idea that we shouldn't attempt to understand and interpret what things happening now might mean for the future.
- ohashi 7y ago

carapace 7y ago

As if this couldn't get crazier: > Goldman Sachs & Co LLC. is serving as financial adviser to both the Internet Society and PIR. https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/11/15/reston-operator-of-org-domain-sells-to-private.html https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/11/15/resto...

koheripbal 7y ago
This is what they do - finance deals. This is as notable as saying Wells Fargo issued their home mortgage.
- carapace 7y ago
  Wells Fargo, eh? Your example is apt, but perhaps not for the reason you intended (unless you're making a subtle joke, in which case I apologize for not catching it.) > This timeline charts the most significant events in the sales scandal that erupted at Wells Fargo [in 2016] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/24/a-timeline-of-wells-fargos-sales-scandal.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/24/a-timeline-of-well... > Wells Fargo(WFC)charged customers a monthly service fee to maintain a checking account that many customers assumed was free and the bank is mulling how to respond to people who feel cheated, according to the bank and sources familiar with the accounts. https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wells-Fargo-2019.08.28.pdf https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wells... > Wells Fargo and an insurance company it worked with have agreed to pay $432 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by customers who say they were charged premiums for auto insurance they did not need. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article237666879.html https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article237666879.... IMO only fools and masochists would continue to bank with Wells Fargo. Anyhow, Goldman Sachs have no business being anywhere near DNS or ".org" at all, at all. They're a bunch of crooks who make Monty Burns look sympathetic in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies_and_legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Controversies_an...
harry8 7y ago
Whenever there are politicans robbing those who they claim to serve, Goldmans are there advising anc charging huge fees. Whether it is this, Greece debt, 1MDB in Malaysia. Goldmans have no regard for their own reputation so we should assume anytime Goldman are advisors that the deal is a massive ripoff for which people should be going to jail. Goldmans may not have always been this way but they sure are now! They're a leading indicator of gross corruption.

foxhop 7y ago

I think I give up on the Internet that we know today. I'm too tired to fight anymore. Monopoly ISPs with data caps, DNS rent seeking, the walled gardens, the internet of shit where I cannot walk down my street without getting recorded by every house with a "ring". I'm done with it. I don't want to partake anymore, I don't want to fight it anymore, I don't want to care anymore. Let the Google's and Facebook's have the old Internet. I'm done with it. The dream is over. The magic is gone for me. The old Internet is gone. Let them have the rest. Maybe then, and only then we will rise up like a Phoenix, with a solution that cannot be stolen out from under us.

kotrunga 7y ago
Ah man.... the exhaustion I feel... is summed up so well by this comment.
askafriend 7y ago
> stolen out from under us. Who is "us"? The internet is available to more people in more countries than ever before. There's more content on the internet than ever before. It's a part of every day life for nearly everyone in the world. That's what's happening to the internet. It's no longer a corner where quirky tinkerers were the only ones who could access it. And the promise of the internet was never to be just that. It was meant to be a vehicle for humanity (along with all it's warts). That's what you're seeing. The rest of humanity coming on-line. The attitude of "this isn't what it was meant to be" presumes that it was meant to be anything at all. Similar to a kid that doesn't want to share their legos with the rest of the class.
- foxhop 7y ago
  They can have my last two Legos, these blocks are no longer useful to me. They already have most of the blocks under their control anyways.
- brianshaler 7y ago
  I think the sentiment was regarding the democratization of knowledge and access, which is shifting more toward an oligarchy. True, more of humanity is coming online. However, they can only participate if they can be monetized and controlled by those with all the wealth and power.

exegete 7y ago

I can’t visit the site. First there’s an SSL cert problem and when I bypass that Verizon blocks it as malware.

Thorrez 7y ago
What SSL cert are you seeing? The site seems fine to me, and the SSLLabs check looks fine. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=savedotorg.org https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=savedotorg.or...
- exegete 7y ago
  I think the cert issue is because of DNS hijacking by my ISP so that they can (falsely) tell me the site has malware. I can’t view the cert now that I’ve made an exception to it.
codemati 7y ago
Not sure why this is getting downvotes. I'm seeing the same - Chrome blocks it, then my work VPN does, with the following error: "This site is blocked due to a security threat that was discovered by the Cisco Umbrella security researchers."
pizza 7y ago
Same here, cisco firewall blocked it

vkaku 7y ago

Done. I own a org site myself.

vkaku 7y ago

I also think ICANN is a very corrupt entity now, with very bad governance at the moment.

celeritascelery 7y ago

Watch the new private group that controls .org revoke their right to this domain.

swsieber 7y ago

Time to have a collectively funded .ngo TLD?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ohashi 7y ago
Already owned by PIR (which runs .ORG and is being sold to Ethos Capital). Sorry, it's a group domain fucking. You're welcome - Ethos Capital, probably.

guywithahat 7y ago

> This article was brought to you by the domain squatters lobby But seriously I don’t see what’s wrong with this sale. There are no restrictions on who can use a .org domain anyways, and the only people price increases really affect are domain squatters (real organizations can afford 10x the current price without batting an eye). I don’t see what’s wrong with this sale

csixty4 7y ago
What exactly are "real organizations"? I can think of two long-lived NFPs in my life that can barely afford hosting & domain registration right now.

jhales 7y ago

Is it okay for startups not based in the `British Indian Ocean Territory` to use `.io` for their domain?

umanwizard 7y ago
Yes. Why shouldn’t it be? I genuinely don’t understand your argument.
simias 7y ago
It's up to the registrar to make the rules. If nic.io is fine with people outside of that territory to use their tld then it's okay. Some TLDs do indeed have stronger requirements. I remember that for a long time getting a .fr was a bit of a pain because you had to prove that you were a french citizen or a french company IIRC.

shotashotshota 7y ago

I don't understand why everything must "grow and adapt ...". Can't something just stop evolving? Its not like its failing or something, we don't need everything to do everything just be good - very good - at what you do.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

_qhtn 7y ago

Where should I mail a bomb?

dang 7y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sgt 7y ago
  Seems like he posted a lame joke. The appropriate response would be for other users to downvote him. I've seen his other comments and he'll regularly be downvoted, but I think you're overreacting a bit. Perhaps you should stick to making sure HN runs, and aside from that mind your own business?
  - dang 7y ago
    Note that word 'repeatedly'. When people post like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958824 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20902321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20902321 and ignore our requests to stop breaking the guidelines, we ban them. If we didn't, the guidelines wouldn't mean much. Sadly, it's my business to deal with flamewars, personal attacks, trolling, and other abuses of HN. If flames are allowed to burn this place to a crisp, HN won't be HN anymore. And eventually there wouldn't be anything worth running or anyone to run it for.
    - sgt 7y ago
      I've gone through some more of his comments and found that you were absolutely justified. Sorry for my remark.
      - _qhtn 7y ago
        which?

0xcde4c3db 7y ago

I've always been a bit confused by the relationships among government agencies, ICANN, IANA, the registry-operating entities, etc., and this site doesn't seem to explain why the CEO of the Internet Society is the right person to appeal to. Can anyone point to an explanation that summarizes the overall flow of authorities and obligations involved here?

ohashi 7y ago
Only entities who could stop this, ICANN (this is being pulled off by insiders including former ICANN CEO). Internet Society - they did this deal in the first place. And... who the hell knows? Could the US Government step in? Maybe? They stepped back during Obama admin, I'm not a lawyer but someone needs to step up and I've lost faith in both ICANN and Internet Society.

TomMckenny 7y ago

It's amazing that .org avoided some powerful group injecting themselves as rent seekers even this long. It's a pity we've decided to run society this way generally.

ur-whale 7y ago

One more argument for taking out name-to-IP translation entirely out of "managing organizations" and moving it onto a fully decentralized blockchain.

devit 7y ago

How about getting the browser and OS makers together to use an alternate DNS system? It only needs Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft to agree and ICANN can be made irrelevant overnight.

rocqua 7y ago
Where do we put the DNS root then? If you want oversight and international consensus it cannot be placed within a country. Only option I see is to put it under the UN but that will probably ramp up the politics.
- rapnie 7y ago
  Yes, have 'access to the internet' a universal human right and a UN body to work towards that goal, managing domains.
hk__2 7y ago
> It only needs Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft to agree and ICANN can be made irrelevant overnight. Of course not. The Web is only a small part of the Internet. DNS is used by way more services than Web browsers.
- kijin 7y ago
  The aforementioned companies make more than web browsers. They make entire operating systems. If an OS changes how it interfaces with DNS, it will affect every service that runs on the OS. To be honest I don't see this happening any time soon with the major commercial OSes. But in Linux you can install some programs to e.g. send all your DNS queries through a certain encrypted tunnel, and nearly every application installed on that box will happily use that tunnel.
- Brian_K_White 7y ago
  But the value of preserving your existing address exactly, including .org on the end, mostly only exists in browsers, where humans find things initially. Actually, I bet by now it doesn't even matter that much even there any more. Consider how the search in google already forms an effective alternative dns for many actual humans attempting to manually go somewhere. If you have a .org domain, you can change all the non-browser uses of the domain pretty easily. The tools in the background of things don't care what the names are. You can change them and it's really not that much of a disruption. Once someone finds your site, via their browser, you can populate that site with whatever kinds of urls and directions and references you want. Just like no one really cares how ugly and long all the urls to actual things other than the front page are. Your site can include say, the directions to access your API, and those directions don't have to say foo.org in them. Even existing api users that break if you have to change your name, can react to that change easily enough. Email is probably the biggest problem. We will all simply have to never pin too much dependency on any single email address. But we already have to do that, so no loss. If you had set up your own domain so you weren't at the mercy of google killing your gmail account and killing your ability to prove ownership of everything else in your life, well you would just need to have more than one email registered with everything like paypal etc. So me@mydomain.org can break and you don't die from it. You just better realize your domain is going to break and unregister those emails everywhere before it goes into someone else's hands. Because when someone else owns a domain, then they can receive all emails sent to any name at that domain, including "reset password" mails. It's not the most fun passtime, but it's not necessarily the end of the world either. It really is human interactive web browser usage where the exact name matters most. So if cloudflare and google simply sent browsers to the right place and ignored the traditional root authority for .org, or any other name lookup, that would pretty much be good enough. Google could do it already without even violating dns just through search results.

shakethemonkey 7y ago

Is there a reason why price caps on .org can't be restored?

patrickdavey 7y ago

This is just awful. For everyone wondering "how bad can it really be?", they can put whatever cost they like to keep your domain registered. I have a small carpooling site for ski fields in New Zealand - snowpool.org . I've run this for 10 years, as a fun side project. If they hike the fees to 3K a year (or whatever) then there's just no way I'd keep it going. I've have to migrate somewhere else, which would be a complete pain in the ass. I find it just awfully sad (and probably corrupt) that this happened at all, and I really hope there's some higher authority that can roll this back - or at minimum bring back the price-cap. Very sad times.

Ayesh 7y ago
This is the case for all new gTLDs. .pro to .xyz to . accountant, the registry can put any price, be it zero or a million dollars.
- patrickdavey 7y ago
  Sure, but, people went into those domains _knowing_ that was the case. .org started with a price cap and I for one thought it would stay that way.
- jedberg 7y ago
  .com has price caps. Imagine what happens when they remove those and they can just price everyone out of their .com names, names they may have had for 25+ years. Imagine a world where whomever has the most money can control your brand. What happens when McDonalds buys the Burger King brand because BK was priced out? .com, .org, and .net are long standing shared resources that should not have unlimited prices. They should be capped forever.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    McDonalds and Burger King can duke it in court. It will be more site the kind of wikileaks that could get effectively removed without having to go legal routes. Just have your friends price them out of their domains. Nobody needs to even buy the domains, they just need to be expensive enough to stay unused.

Iv 7y ago

It is OpenNIC you need to petition, so that they accept to cause a schism on the .org TLD

axaxs 7y ago

Based on my limited interaction with the fellow it's addressed to: a complete knob, wasting your breath.

reenaguptadel 7y ago

Thank you and good luck https://www.anjali-khanna.in/ https://www.anjali-khanna.in/

squeezingswirls 7y ago

I fully support any campaign against the .org TLD hijacking but it would be good to know who's behind that savedotorg.org domain name. A whois search gives me 'Registrant Organization: Data Protected'. I'd like to know to whom are we giving our email addresses, and what are they going to do with them?

SyneRyder 7y ago
That could be due to GDPR. Some European registry companies believe GDPR makes the collection and publishing of WHOIS data illegal. ICANN is currently suing a Tucows company in Germany [1] over their refusal to comply with WHOIS data collection, and ICANN published a Temporary Specification that allows/requires every other registry to hide WHOIS data globally pending the result of the GDPR court case [2]. Of course, that doesnt prevent savedotorg.org from posting their own "About Us" webpage explaining who they are. [1] https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2018-05-25-en https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2018-05-25-en [2] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data-specs-en https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data...
- squeezingswirls 7y ago
  Yes, an "About Us" page should be included on that site at least. AFAIK GDPR protects personal data only, so if the savedotorg.org registrant is an entity of any kind then it shouldn't be any problem publishing that info.
  - squeezingswirls 7y ago
    They've added an "About this site" page now. As I can't edit my previous comment, I'll add the link here https://savedotorg.org/index.php/about/ https://savedotorg.org/index.php/about/

NickNameNick 7y ago

At what point does the internet community simply decide to fork the DNS root? I know it's a management nightmare, but the existence of an alternate root would put a cap on the value of the existing one.

simlevesque 7y ago
https://www.opennic.org https://www.opennic.org

fwxwi 7y ago

Can't, like... the biggest DNS servers of the world just turn their backs to the current management of .org and delegate that power to another entity?

tobias3 7y ago

As a plan B. Is there any top level domain run by a non-profit where I can switch to long term?

teddyh 7y ago
If you mostly trust your local government, perhaps your national ccTLD would be fine?
- tobias3 7y ago
  Hmm, in my case this would be .de/DENIC. Seems to be organized as a cooperative with those members: https://www.denic.de/en/about-denic/members/member-list/ https://www.denic.de/en/about-denic/members/member-list/ So not very promising. But .eu/EURid seems to be a non-profit.

gorgoiler 7y ago

Is there an effective direct action that can shake ICANN into some sense? I don’t mean this as a serious suggestion, but as an example we could have a “drop dot org” month where resolvers refuse to forward queries to the ORG nameservers. Not a great example because it would have a pretty negative impact on the domain holders, and no impact on ICANN. Can anyone think of a better example, equivalent to saying to ICANN “if you go ahead with this then we’re going to boycott dot org in a way that makes it worthless”?

liveoneggs 7y ago
Why do the resolvers need to follow what ICANN says to use for .org? They could revolt if coordinated

arminiusreturns 7y ago

When I ranted about how the transfer of DNS power under the Obama admin was a bad idea and stuff like this would happen I got called a crazy conspiracy theorist... I'm getting really tired of being right about bad things, the "I told you so" is very hollow.

r721 7y ago

Related discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779

damm 7y ago

If everything is as corrupt as some throwaway states why build a new domain registration system more free and open? I know it's work however if done right (or better) a .org should be low cost for a NGO and how about a decent non profit tld so they could have it lower cost or free? Sure it sounds hard but the automation and handling enrolling new domains is the real work

bouger 7y ago

Perhaps the most likely way to stop the sale would be to make a competing offer and outbid Ethos.

phantom_oracle 7y ago

I mentioned in my last comment about this being outright corruption by the Americans involved. Now it is time to mention the 1 positive that the USA has that other countries(visibly) don't: > The willingness and ability to sue as a collective .org is a domain used by everyone from Wikipedia, UN, Debian and your national dog shelter. Private Equity cares only about one thing: making money. Anybody with a toe in the finance world knows that these are the same people that will do "hostile takeovers" to strip companies of their assets, pile on debt and push out a sale. A class-action lawsuit targeting the PE firm(or parties involved in the sale of .org) and then pushing your State Attorneys to investigate these corrupt individuals at a personal level will have the desired effect that appeals to the moral high-ground won't.

kijin 7y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. Letters like this only work for congresspeople, and even then only some of the time. For everyone else, lawsuits, injunctions, and criminal investigations are much more effective deterrents.

chmaynard 7y ago

Has anyone checked to see how many for-profit corporate websites are using .org? My favorite example is coursera.org.

ccvannorman 7y ago

TLDR: "Dear Mr Andrew Sullivan, even though you already had extensive meetings and plans to sell and you are fully aware of the damage you'll cause, and have decided instead to take the money and run, please reconsider." Why would someone so greedy and tone deaf possibly give a damn about such a letter? He's walking away a rich man and he already made his choice fully knowing. If you want to Save .org, abolish ICANN. It's time to take our medicine, ICANN with no oversight has predictably led us to an internet controlled by greed and corruption of a few wealthy elite. Appealing to the greedy will get us nowhere. We need to seize power, not to plead.

yabadabadoes 7y ago

I think it is possible to do a "name drop" similar to a coin drop and either change the accepted ending for .org or remove ICANN's authority over namespace altogether.. One issue might be creating an acceptable authority for certificate registrar's, so let's encrypt has an explanation of what domains it confirms and how if not via the ICANN derived path.

Brian_K_White 7y ago

Why can't we simply configure clients to use a phonebook we like, rather than the phonebook we don't like? Today, it's relatively easy to create something like a piece of software and a db of alternative roots. And any clients which have that kit installed are suddenly simply ignoring pieces of what the traditional roots say. Yes it would be fractured for a while. But it's no worse than say, dns over https, and the way say, you can't reach archive.is while your browser is using doh, but can when you turn doh off. (unless they finally fixed that, but that was the situation for a ridiculously long time after both cloudflare and archive.is were made aware.) We already have such things today, so might as well employ it as well as suffer it.

robbya 7y ago
As a website owner, how do I track down all the alternate roots I'd need to register with? If each of those charge a fee, how much will I need to spend on each root? If I need to perform an OPS task like flipping to a new external load balancer IP, how many alternate robots do I need to coordinate with, and how much testing do I need to verify each root is updated?

unityByFreedom 7y ago

Have to wonder if this campaign is just going to increase its value further. Is .org really a valid way to verify legitimacy of a non-governmental organization? Should we be looking for another solution here or is this the right hill to die on?

diminish 7y ago

Icannn is a corrupt organization as anyone inside knows.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

This been in the making since the start of the year: https://www.namecheap.com/blog/keep-domain-prices-in-check/ https://www.namecheap.com/blog/keep-domain-prices-in-check/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bi6gg5/help_keep_domain_prices_in_check/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bi6gg5/help_ke... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19769952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19769952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19752425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19752425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19747512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19747512

jacob-malthouse 7y ago

Did a podcast explainer on this here: https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/152-why-we-should-save-org-domains/ https://www.wholewhale.com/podcast/152-why-we-should-save-or...

bbanyc 7y ago

In 1998 Jon Postel briefly "hijacked" the DNS root zone. Formal control over DNS had always belonged to the US government, but Postel commanded such universal respect from the internet community that they were willing to follow him, as head of IANA, over the government contractor that "officially" ran the root at the time. This of course is why ICANN was created, to bring governance of the Internet closer to the community that developed and maintained it. But now ICANN has become just as remote and unaccountable as the bureaucrats and contractors it replaced. And Postel is long gone, and the Internet community has grown so big and fragmented that no one person will ever have anywhere near the towering position he once did. So now what do we do?

throwaway2048 7y ago
Except at least the American bureaucrats were accountable to the Department of Commerce, and ultimately elected officials. ICANN is accountable to nobody, whatsoever, in any capacity.
- bbanyc 7y ago
  Wilbur Ross is even less trustworthy than ICANN. Which is saying something.
- pas 7y ago
  ICANN members are not powerless, even if organizing and kicking ICANN out is a lot of work.

jacob-malthouse 7y ago

savedotorg.org campaign now over 6000 letters in under 36 hours. over 200k visits.

mikedilger 7y ago

Existing .org domains they can't move without overwhelming disruption, so most will just pay whatever it costs. But for the future, we need to move the Internet towards having peering relationships with TLDs such as OpenNIC.net. Motivations: * This issue of .org being sold for profit * The fact that OpenNIC had to rename their TLD domains (e.g. .free to .libre) when ICANN created a colliding .free domain, demonstrating clearly that they are not peers. Internet technologies such as browsers and operating systems should recognize ICANN and OpenNIC roots as peers, with DNSSEC to both. Should ICANN decide to create a .libre domain, existing browsers and operating systems should consider it a DNS attack and not recognize it. I think an organization like Mozilla ought to (1) flesh out any technical challenges, (2) support OpenNIC and (3) push for this.

duskwuff 7y ago
OpenNIC is a poorly managed amateur project, built on shoddy infrastructure that was thrown together in the early 2000s -- it's completely incapable of acting as any kind of peer to the ICANN root. In particular: - Their resolvers are not consistently available. Many of them are hosted on public cloud hosts (which also raises some questions about their security), and outages are not uncommon. - It's not clear that they support DNSSEC, or that they have any plan to do so. - The governance of the OpenNIC-specific zones that they offer is even shoddier than the DNS root itself. Most of them have no registry/registrar distinction, no domain transfer process, no WHOIS services, and sketchy to nonexistent abuse policies. - Since OpenNIC TLDs cannot be resolved on the public Internet, it's impossible to issue a SSL certificate for one.
- mikedilger 7y ago
  Most of your points are valid. That's why I'm suggesting Mozilla support it. It would be a lot less "shoddy" if someone shepherded it. I think it is the right idea. The last point is only true because they aren't recognized, which recognition would immediately fix, therefore it is moot.
  - duskwuff 7y ago

mikorym 7y ago

> the sale of .ORG Wait, what???

EETruth 7y ago

Reading the names of the people involved I'm not surprised that there's corruption...

sambe 7y ago

I guess it makes sense to renew now for as many years as you can?

joecool1029 7y ago

I've found it curious that while there's a relationship to trademark for US domains (the .com/.org/.net ones) in anti-cybersquatting law and UDRP, the USPTO doesn't have a mechanism to tie a domain to a mark. This would be useful if we could register our marks and tie it to a domain, along with the standard application fee. At least for certain TLD's (.com would be a good candidate). FWIW, I have a long history of dragging registrars through the mud to get clients' domains back. As of this time, I am in a dispute with GoDaddy over a domain that was deleted because GoDaddy sells a 'business registration' service. My client renewed this thinking it was for his expired domain, GoDaddy updated the WHOIS nameserver records and the site came back online. 45 days after the initial expiration GoDaddy dropped the domain without notice and a broker picked it up. I can't even go through UDRP on this because the client never registered their trademark.

Razengan 7y ago

Half-baked idea for an alternative to domains: Let every site have a UUID, kinda like TOR addresses, and let the host/servers as well as users specify multiple human-readable shortcuts for that UUID. So HN might get o4u20j4c9qwybv3u0p2hnxjq4k1n4vmcsvtvm2666kjn123 and no other site should ever get the same ID until the heat death of the universe, and you could access it by any name you want. Something like that would be resilient to impersonation, takeovers, brand renaming, and other issues.

PostOnce 7y ago
you're describing ip addresses and domain names
- Razengan 7y ago
  I'm talking about something akin to onion addresses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.onion

christopoulos 7y ago

Could we include .book while we’re at it? Seems like the handling of that TLD went really wrong...

danyork 7y ago

For more information about this transaction, please see this post from one of the Internet Society Board of Trustees members who voted for the sale (as did they all unanimously) - Why I Voted to Sell .ORG - http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_org/ http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_o...

jacob-malthouse 7y ago

ISOC CEO does not consider the public reaction or petition significant. He stated that a mere 10,000 signatures when there are millions of .orgs indicates lack of public concern or any serious opposition to the deal. Ethos Capital paid $1.135 billion for total, unconditional, purchase of the PIR from ISOC. ISOC just "grabbed the opportunity when Ethos presented it," ISOC have reviewed Ethos’s governance plans and approved them, but will have no means to enforce compliance with those plans. The deal must be approved by the end of the 1st Quarter 2021 or it fails. The exact date is still confidential. It must be approved by two bodies – ICANN and the Pennsylvania Orphans Court, which is a specialist court for estates and trusts. The PIR is incorporated in Pennsylvania and this court must approve changes in the PIR charter in order for Ethos Capital to take ownership. This is because “the Orphans’ Court judge is the ultimate defender and protector of the fund in question, and the Orphans’ Court will protect that fund and ensure that the fund is distributed to the correct beneficiary” There is a good introduction to this court at https://www.skhlaw.com/pennsylvania-orphans-court-101-all-the-basics-you-need-to-know-before-venturing-in/ https://www.skhlaw.com/pennsylvania-orphans-court-101-all-th... This means that if the Pennsylvania Orphans Court has not reached a determination by 1st April next year, or if that decision is being challenged in a manner which delays implementation, the deal fails.

dang 7y ago
You've created multiple accounts just to post on this issue. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, and neither is using the site for political battle, even on an issue where the community is largely in agreement. Could you please take a look at this reply I posted to your other account? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660175 You're certainly welcome to participate as a community member, which means following the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using the site as intended, for intellectual curiosity. But it's not ok to use it as a platform for a cause, no matter how good a cause it may be. Also, please don't copy/paste comments here. That lowers signal/noise ratio and breaks the site guidelines, which call for curious conversation.
- 7y ago