15 ms·

ISOC sold the .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B

• dano 7y ago
  Note that I've not found confirmation of this story and hope that someone has a second source.
  • fanf2 7y ago
    Also reported at https://domainnamewire.com/2019/11/29/ethos-paid-1-135-billion-for-org/ https://domainnamewire.com/2019/11/29/ethos-paid-1-135-billi...
• Titanous 7y ago
  Here’s the primary source: https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/advancing-the-internet-societys-mission-into-the-future https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/advancing-the-internet-s...
  • garaetjjte 7y ago
    >Our plan is to live within the spirit of historic practice when it comes to pricing, which means, potentially, annual price increases of up to 10 percent on average – which today would equate to approximately $1 per year. This is very weasel worded way to say that price would double every 7.27 years... (and this is only "Our plan")
    • chii 7y ago
      10% is at least 3x annual inflation rate. That's too much imho. Monopolies should be regulated - domain name administration is a natural monopoly.
      • tehjoker 7y ago
        I would go further, they shouldn't be "regulated", this is a public service that should be run in the interests of society as a whole and not for the benefit of a private actor. We should have a tax funding mechanism, and run it either as a nationalized utility or through an international commission.
      • shadowgovt 7y ago
        How so? There are a great many TLDs in the market.
        • chii 7y ago
          There's only 1 .org TLD - and it's meaning cannot be replicated with another TLD. It's the same as a TV series - there are great many TV series , but only 1 Game of Thrones on HBO, and it's not substitutable. Therefore, HBO has a monopoly on Game of Thrones.
          • shadowgovt 7y ago
            That's not at all how monopolies work, and nobody is going to break up HBO for having exclusive control of Game of Thrones. > and it's meaning cannot be replicated with another TLD. anything-org.us, anything-org.xyz, anything-org.com, or even just disregard bothering with .org entirely since it literally has no meaning; there's no enforcement on the soft policy that it represent non-profits. For example, slashdot.org is owned by BizX. Old-guard nerds have nostalgic attachment to the .org TLD's history; that's it. It's hardly a case that it's a monopoly.
            • ta0987 7y ago
              What if you already have a .org domain that you actually use? How would you like it if your phone company started charging you extra to keep your phone number, and told you, there's plenty of other phone numbers you can have, we won't charge extra for those
              • shadowgovt 7y ago
                You mean "How did I like it when my email provider increased their rates?" I switched email providers and updated my email address with my relevant contacts. It was annoying, but nobody claims seriously that email providers are a monopoly.
                • 7y ago
    • dorfsmay 7y ago
      10% per year! That 3 to 4 times recent historic and near future projection for inflation rates.
  • wmf 7y ago
    "The Internet Society will receive this as a fund that it will invest as an endowment... This funding is sufficient to provide the Internet Society with broadly equivalent annual earnings we currently receive from PIR. And through responsible, well managed investment, we believe this fund will provide a comparable level of funding to the Internet Society in perpetuity." Translation: "We sold the Internet to vultures (super-nice vultures! you won't believe how nice they are!) so that we could have... basically the same cash flow that we already had. But now we're going to deal with bankers instead of Afilias."
    • steve19 7y ago
      "Our mission is to support and promote the development of the Internet around the world — an Internet that is open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy." Prediction: they will achieve nothing, at all, whatsoever. Everyone who voted for this should be ashamed of themselves.
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      The .org TLD isn't "The Internet."
      • wmf 7y ago
        Hey, give it time. Maybe next they'll sell the IETF to Cisco for another billion.
    • FireBeyond 7y ago
      I wonder how good their investment strategy is that 1.1B will earn them $120M/year in income, that's nearly 11% return...
      • wmf 7y ago
        No, it sounds like they're aiming for $50M/year.
        • FireBeyond 7y ago
  • dang 7y ago
    Changed to that from http://netpolicynews.com/index.php/89-r/1166-1-300-000-000-to-internet-society-if-org-deal-goes-down http://netpolicynews.com/index.php/89-r/1166-1-300-000-000-t.... Thanks!
• evross 7y ago
  Sounds like a cash-out or a kickback. Still not worth any more money than ISOC was already making. ISOC should listen and row back on this decision. There are more than ten thousand signatures on https://savedotorg.org/ https://savedotorg.org/.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    That's seriously a tiny drop in the bucket in terms of total internet usage.
    • soraminazuki 7y ago
      That's only because most internet users don't even know what a domain is.
      • shadowgovt 7y ago
        Then why would they care if the domain is .org, .com, or .xyz? This whole concern sounds like a tempest in a teapot.
        • soraminazuki 7y ago
          It matters, because large scale domain migration would have very serious consequences for users even if they didn't know what a domain is.
• edoceo 7y ago
  OpenNIC is looking better and better.
  • StudentStuff 7y ago
    ISPs buying in were OpenNIC's stumbling block (as no normal user is changing their default DNS), ultimately that is why OpenNIC never took off. The only way an alternate DNS could become popular is if Apple, Google or Mozilla (assuming a resurgence in Firefox popularity) were pushing an alternative DNS.
    • edoceo 7y ago
      It's not too late. Eternal vigilance! I fight for the user!
    • Avamander 7y ago
      OpenNIC could work if there'd be an easy way to instruct e.g. dnsmasq and dnscrypt-proxy to resolve only certain TLDs using only OpenNIC, I'd definitely have it enabled then.
• vermontdevil 7y ago
  Translation: the annual max of 10% price increases are gonna happen.
• rs23296008n1 7y ago
  Sounds like a lot of money for something that should actually only be a minor administrative cost. Something smells. Perhaps a few audits, some regulation and a lot more oversight by people who are less "enthusiastically driven by negotiable pleasantries" would help?
  • wmf 7y ago
    AFAIK a .org domain costs ~$10/year; ~$5 is a mandatory "donation" to ISOC, <$2 goes to Afilias to actually operate .org, and I guess there is some kind of PIR administrative overhead. So yeah, your intuition is right.
    • oefrha 7y ago
      Details in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658218 (Clarification: by $0-2 goes to Afilias I meant that much goes to the profit of Afilias.) In addition to that, apparently $2 to Afilias (for-profit, actual registry operator) was a recent development[1]; it was more like $4 before 2018. And guess what, former PIR CEO (2011-2018) was Vice President of Discovery Services for Afilias (2018-2011).[2] (This was pointed out to me by [3].) So the shenanigans have been going on long before the monumental .org sale we're discussing here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658218 [1] https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/28/pir-org-slashes-registry-fee-to-afilias-in-half-to-18-million/ https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/28/pir-org-slashes-regist... [2] https://icannwiki.org/Brian_Cute https://icannwiki.org/Brian_Cute [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659856
  • ricardobeat 7y ago
    They were reporting ~$90m/year revenue, so it's not an outrageous multiplier - no idea how they earned so much from the domain service though.
    • Seanambers 7y ago
      This is quite cheap actually. 12x multipler - raise prices(10%) 3 times and it's down to 9x :) Viewed as a perpetuity the income should have been valued way higher - around 4 billion. This deal just stinks.
• dang 7y ago
  The major threads so far, from most comments to fewest: "Save .org": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 "Why I Voted to Sell .ORG": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656960 "ICANN races towards regulatory capture: the great .org heist": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21626677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21626677 "ICA asks ICANN to block .Org private equity deal in damning letter": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779 "Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold to private equity firm": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 "Private Equity Is Going to Ruin the .Org Domain System and Screw Nonprofits": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 Did I miss any?
  • ddevault 7y ago
    My thread didn't get much momentum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664582 But the linked article has pre-filled form letters you can use to send complaints to the IRS, and a copy of a letter I sent to the AG in CA and VA, which may provide some inspiration for anyone who wants to write a similar letter. https://drewdevault.com/2019/11/29/dotorg.html https://drewdevault.com/2019/11/29/dotorg.html
    • rhizome 7y ago
      What if all three organizations don't care if they lose their 501(c)3's? A billion dollars is a million dollars a week for 20 years, it can pay for a lot of kickbacks.
  • miles 7y ago
    Here are a few more I posted that failed to get much traction: Ethos/PIR Funded and Led a Scorched Earth Campaign Against Communities at ICANN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659409 The .ORG Sale Is a Radical Departure That Puts the Internet at Risk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659278 Vint 'father of the 'net' Cerf dodges dot-org sell-off during public Q&A https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659240 This submission by almostbasic offers an excellent overview: .ORGanized Takeover – a timeline of the ISOC, PIR & Ethos Capital Deal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21630179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21630179
• pookeh 7y ago
  DNS need to move to blockchain. End this shenanigans with centralized ownerships.
  • ShorsHammer 7y ago
    Public key crypto as used by tor is probably a satisfactory level of decentralisation without all the extra steps and inevitable fraudulence from blockchain types. Convincing people to use alternate resolvers is the real problem. Already chrome has stripped out most of a URI, and from memory they are planning to go further, changing public perception around an "ugly" address is very much a social challenge rather than technical.
    • Avamander 7y ago
      Tor also allows everyone to keep an URL instead of having to worry about being outbid or just being able to pay anything.
      • ShorsHammer 7y ago
        Exactly, it's a fair and equitable process, I have my doubts about the various blockchain implementations despite being quite close to some of them. If you are a company with branding needs you can always go the facebookcorewwwi.onion route.
    • bpicolo 7y ago
      > changing public perception around an "ugly" address is very much a social challenge rather than technical Memorability matters regardless of the public perception
    • im3w1l 7y ago
      Namecoin is able to hand out arbitrary addresses rather than ugly ones. It's one of the earliest coins and predated the get-rich-quick goldrush.
• corndoge 7y ago
  Who the fuck is the internet society
  • dboreham 7y ago
    Layer 8
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• geogriffin 7y ago
  Does anyone have a clue if they'll manage to keep their 501(c)(3) status with $1.1 billion in profit for 2019? My understanding is that profits like this unrelated to their normal business activies are taxable, and may also cause the IRS to reconsider their non-profit status and/or levy penalties [1]. [1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business-income-defined https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business...
  • pwg 7y ago
    HN comment thread on how you can file a complaint with the IRS about this deal and their non-profit status: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658324
  • matt4077 7y ago
    The $1.1 billion isn't profit. They're selling an asset (the .org rights). That transaction should be entirely neutral in terms of profit/loss.
    • abbadadda 7y ago
      In what world are the majority of asset sales untaxed? Look at stocks, bonds, bitcoin, homes, art, gold, silver... All assets and all taxable upon realized gains and losses.
    • grenoire 7y ago
      P&L is the basis for corporate income taxes. There are many other taxes, such as capital gain.
    • foobarbazetc 7y ago
      Nah.
  • neurostimulant 7y ago
    From their press release: https://thenew.org/the-internet-society-public-interest-registry-a-new-era-of-opportunity/ https://thenew.org/the-internet-society-public-interest-regi... > Once the transaction is completed, PIR will continue to meet the highest standards of public transparency, accountability, and social performance in line with its longstanding purpose-driven mission, and will consider seeking B Corporation certification. I guess they intend to abandon their non-profit status soon?
• bradleyjg 7y ago
  I don't understand how a non-profit can be purchased. Virginia must have some strange corporate law.
  • Fezzik 7y ago
    You can buy a non-profit so long as you 1) are a non-profit, or 2) continue the concern as a non-profit... in every state of The Union, no? A non-profit can also sell assets, obviously. Isn’t this just an asset? Edit, to add: or 3) you convert the non-profit to some other type of ()corp() and then pay appropriate taxes.... though I’m not as familiar with how this would work.
  • jml7c5 7y ago
    IANAL. Wouldn't this be a sale of a non-profit's assets, rather than a sale of the non-profit itself? I see no legal reason a non-profit can't sell, e.g., a building it owns. Everything else seems skeevy, but this particular angle does not seem promising for a basis of any legal proceedings.
    • bradleyjg 7y ago
      The press release says "Ethos Capital’s acquisition of Public Interest Registry from the Internet Society". Public Interest Registry says on its website: "Based in Reston, Virginia, Public Interest Registry is a not-for–profit organization created by the Internet Society (ISOC), originally to manage the .ORG domain." and has links to IRS Form 990. It's possible that Ethos Capital is being imprecise are not technically acquiring PIR, but it certainly reads that way.
      • jml7c5 7y ago
        Ah, my mistake. Yes, that does seem... well, legally complicated, to say the least.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • wmf 7y ago
• jka 7y ago
  This isn't a defense or a criticism of the decision, but it looks like the board of ISOC voted unanimously to enter exclusive negotations with Ethos - their minutes are available online: https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/minutes/147 https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/minutes/14... That could indicate that there's more background and context than has been published, since the outcry seems so contrary to the vote. Either way there's missing public information and for an important resource like .org that's going to cause problems given a sudden change.
  • theli0nheart 7y ago
    I don’t understand what you’re implying, other than “this thing exists”. Read those minutes, and you’ll find that every “interesting” section is filled with redacted text. If anything, that should make any outside observer more skeptical.
  • ShorsHammer 7y ago
    > [ REDACT … REDACT ]
• walrus01 7y ago
  I'm going to copy and paste my own comment from 7 days ago, because I think the quote contained within the Register article is so damning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612033 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."
  • noobermin 7y ago
    Is this potentially illegal?
    • dd36 7y ago
      Self-dealing?
    • unreal37 7y ago
      No. Can't possibly be. Until someone lies under oath about it.
  • dang 7y ago
    Please don't copy/paste comments here. It lowers signal/noise ratio and isn't good for conversation. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
• jml7c5 7y ago
  I suppose the question is who will do something about this. What group or individual is going to slog through the work of getting this investigated? What group or individual is going to slog through a lawsuit? Would the EFF take it up, or is it outside their purview? Is there any hope of reversal/fines/prosecution? Will it hinge on intent? Does that intent exist, or was ISOC just foolish? If there was intent, can that intent be shown beyond a reasonable doubt? Or is there some rigid, incontrovertible rule that has been broken, such that intent doesn't matter? All in all, it seems like such a stupid financial decision by ISOC (and one which goes against their mission) that one can't help but presume some sort of foul play. But who knows, perhaps they just messed up.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    The linked article pretty much lays out how this aligns with ISOC's mission---$1.1 billion, properly managed, gives ISOC the resources to pursue its mission for the foreseeable future. Probably nothing to prosecute.
    • lowpro 7y ago
      I don't understand this point though, since on a yearly basis it will be roughly the same for them: "This funding is sufficient to provide the Internet Society with broadly equivalent annual earnings we currently receive from PIR. And through responsible, well managed investment, we believe this fund will provide a comparable level of funding to the Internet Society in perpetuity." So unless they were worried that .org was not as stable as an endowment, it seems like it didn't help them at all anyway. And this is at the cost of their core mission?
      • numbsafari 7y ago
        Would you rather sit on a board that has to oversee an actual operation, or one that merely monitors an investment and spends lavishly on board meetings?
        • toast0 7y ago
• OrgNet 7y ago
  they should have auctioned it... and get 10x more
  • dpau 7y ago
    i think the point was to sell it to friends at a discount
    • josteink 7y ago
      Specifically at a 10x discount.
• wessorh 7y ago
  just fucking wow. ISOC didn't need that money, the internet is fucked. We need to start working to decentralize naming. I loved the internet before ICANN and DNS. We fucked and built a monster.
  • quickthrower2 7y ago
    What was pre dns like? Just ip addresses?
    • dboreham 7y ago
      No there was a hosts file. DNS solved the problem that the file was getting too large and took too much admin overhead to copy around.
      • neurostimulant 7y ago
        Maybe this event will force us to take alternative dns more seriously. Maybe OpenNIC, Namecoin or other related technologies I'm not aware of will finally gain more traction?
• rmah 7y ago
  Question: what even gives ISOC the right to sell it? IIRC, they were granted control by the US gov, but that is not the same as ownership.
  • slantedview 7y ago
    This x 1000000.
  • hanniabu 7y ago
    That's a very good question
  • adventured 7y ago
    Likely the same contractual basis that granted the transferal of Network Solutions to VeriSign via acquisition, which brought along control over .com and .net. There are probably terms that allow for the control to be transferred via sale in some manner. Ultimately, either way, the US Government allows it to happen; they could intervene if they cared to and make the sale untenable. It's such a good rent extraction business that Berkshire Hathaway has accumulated 11% of VeriSign. Last year VeriSign's gross profit margin was 82% and their net income margin was a staggering 47% (a level you never see from major public companies, outside of rare cases like Visa or Facebook).
  • fanf2 7y ago
    .org was moved from Network Solutions / Verisign to PIR by ICANN. ISOC can (apparently) sell PIR without affecting the .org contract.
• walrus01 7y ago
  ISOC is redacting its own meeting minutes. The part here about "PIR business" is about the sale of .org (public interest registry). What the hell? https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/minutes/ https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/minutes/ Ctrl-f for "redact"
  • ShorsHammer 7y ago
    This needs far more attention. US whistle-blower laws are fairly decent I thought (NatSec aside). Surely there's someone out there who can collect a fair sum to drop some info.
  • mthoms 7y ago
    Ctrl-f for the involvement of "Goldman Sachs".
    • walrus01 7y ago
      I actually missed that part but now the urge to facepalm is even greater.
• 2pointsomone 7y ago
  You know what an NTEN in partnership with a mega tech company (e.g. Google) should do? Buy a TLD that replaces .org and seamlessly transition (for free for 2 years or so) every .org owner. It's not impossible to imagine a mass exodus from .org that the search engines, browsers, and DNS providers quickly respond to. And give ICANN the biggest sign of how this should never happen again.
  • Thorentis 7y ago
    Agree. Not sure what the TLD could be though. .ngo is a bit too specific. .non (for non-profit) is a possible option.
    • 2pointsomone 7y ago
      Both good ideas! I would have probably come up with .public or .world or something less representative of organization legal structures.
      • JuettnerDistrib 7y ago
        Isn't .www the obvious choice? ;)
    • chrisseaton 7y ago
      Why do you need a special TLD for these organisations though? Having non-profit tax status tells me about zero about the organisation.
      • sdenton4 7y ago
        And .gov tells you nothing about a government organization, and .com tells you nothing about a commercial organization... Oh, wait.
        • chrisseaton 7y ago
          Right, so why worry about it?
• shotashotashota 7y ago
  Really...what the hell do they do to deserve a 1.1b$ evaluation? Are they manually checking the validity of .org domains? What do they do??? Christ, this is just blatant corruption its so depressing Why do they need to make a profit in the first place?? Do everything needs to be profitable??
  • cortesoft 7y ago
    They earned that valuation by having a monopoly on a desirable TLD. They don't provide that much value, this is simple rent seeking.
  • peterwwillis 7y ago
    This is one of those thought processes that makes me laugh at the human brain. You have no idea what's going on, but it seems strange, so you decide you know exactly what's going on. We really are irrational creatures.
  • toast0 7y ago
    > Are they manually checking the validity of .org domains? There are no restrictions on registrants for a .org domain. It was intended as a place for non-profit organizations, or other uses that didn't fit within .com or .net, and that was never enforced or enforceable, and the restrictive intent was removed.
• drawkbox 7y ago
  The time of .org as 'trusted' is over. When a private equity investment firm buys something, they plan to extract value, they don't create value. Ethos Capital was formed in 2019 [1]. Price caps were lifted before it was sold [2]. Combined with the billion plus valuation, something is sketchy. Even if you trust this sale, they could even resell it to a less trustworthy owner after increasing rates making a return on investment, that is probably the plan. .orgs will be filled with extortion to good .orgs, and fake .orgs will be created which will create distrust about existing .orgs, and allow propaganda to spread. There will be tons of malware and phishing going on when people think they are on trustable domains. If they could buy .gov they would. Just more of the turn of the internet to authoritarian/corporate control over the internet's anti-authoritarian/public/independent roots. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/private-equity-firm-buys-org-domain-months-after-icann-lifted-price-caps/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/private-equity-f...
  • ddingus 7y ago
    I am going to let my .org return to the pool. I will miss having it, but I feel this move is adding zero value. Money grab, violation of net basics. We are moving to a new, worse time. Have been for a while. I do not want to reward that investment at all.
    • Aperocky 7y ago
      Maybe with the abundance of TLDs .com/.org will eventually be reduced in importance and seen just as another TLD with a bit of special history.
      • thaumasiotes 7y ago
        As things stand now, .com is basically seen as just a mysterious string that ends URLs in much the same way that "http" begins URLs. It isn't viewed as having any more significance than that. "Just another TLD" is arguably a step up in importance from "invisible part of the background that nobody ever thinks about".
• olliej 7y ago
  So they expect to be able recoup that billion dollars. There’s no way that’s going to be done without screwing everyone.
• vunie 7y ago
  move you domains off isoc-controlled tlds as soon as you can. It'll probably take some time for them to actually raise prices. Use this time to point your visitors/search engines to your new domain.
  • ddingus 7y ago
    Exactly.
  • IceWreck 7y ago
    What other major tlds do they own?
• sgc 7y ago
  What other TLDs does ISOC control directly? Why sell .org and not another TLD? Is not .org at the heart of the ethos of a free and open internet? This feels like an intentional corruption of ISOC to discredit it's future activity and thereby change the course of future mechanisms for control of TLDs by changing narratives, public opinion, etc. This is so odd I would not be surprised if it one day comes to light that there were State actors at play making sure this deal happened. To me it seems like a point of immediate international security to scrutinize this transaction and invalidate it if required.
  • cardamomo 7y ago
    Can you please elaborate on what you judge to be potential international security concerns in this case?
    • sgc 7y ago
      Outside of the recent TLD expansion (which presents its own ethical concerns similar to this one), TLDs are almost all controlled by governments. In an ideal world those that aren't should be operated as a utility and prices kept at a legal minimum to support operations, due to their critical nature for human communication and the fact they are natural monopolies. Anything that moves away from that, such as moving from a nonprofit control to a venture capital control, should be rejected due to the risk of pricing out legitimate users of the tld and other unregulated behaviors which might benefit a business but not the democratic nature of the internet (such as allowing for preferred pricing or other transaction details with certain entities, or anything else they can imagine and get away with). These concerns are compounded by the intention of the Public Interest Registry, which is to provide TLDs for nonprofits -- which should be proactively protected from predatory business practices. Further, the buyer openly plans on raising prices extremely fast and will definitely price out at least some of the most vulnerable users of the TLD, and introduce hardship on others. If you love the internet you should hate this. On the situation of gaming the system by a State actor, obviously there has been a long standing push to get ICANN and the US GOV out of the internet infrastructure. Creating chaos, little, by little, lends credence to this push or another similar one. That vacuum would probably be filled in places like Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, etc by easier government censorship, including (they would hope) more control over their smaller neighbors' internet. The current situation is of course not perfect, but one can see why subversive action could be a chosen path by any one of several state actors.
• corndoge 7y ago
  Good, let them have it. If they screw over .org owners as everyone fears, then perhaps there will be increased awareness and incentive to use or develop alternatives to registrars.
• orliesaurus 7y ago
  Does anyone remember the dotp2p project to create a mobile-first decentralized DNS? Probably around 2011? The core ideas are still valid today it seems.
• whoopdedo 7y ago
  There's slightly under 10MM .org domains registered, according to statdns.com. So each name is worth $135 to them.
  • theli0nheart 7y ago
    That’s actually not completely unreasonable, given that domain registration payouts are essentially perpetuities. If a popular, long-standing domain gets dropped, it’s likely it’ll just get picked up by someone else.
• jchook 7y ago
  Cool how technology allows us to decentralize DNS yet no one uses it.
• necovek 7y ago
  "This funding is sufficient to provide the Internet Society with broadly equivalent annual earnings we currently receive from PIR." How is it possible to sell something for the value of annual earnings? That means that Ethos Capital will return their entire investment in 1 year — that's preposterous! What am I missing? I can't imagine any business deal like this going through, it's clearly detrimenal to Internet Society which's going to lose a big regular income.
  • EwanToo 7y ago
    I'm sure this means if they invest the $1 billion they'll get annual returns equivalent to the money they get from .org
    • necovek 7y ago
      Thanks for the clarification: that, at least, makes more sense than my original reading. Still seems weird Internet Society would move from maintaining .org to investing for no real gain, but at least it's not "preposterous" as I originally claimed.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• neiman 7y ago
  This is quite strangely written, but if I understood correctly: - they got $1.1 B for selling PIR - the will build a new misterious endowment to manage this money, right?
• nikolay 7y ago
  The seizing of .org is a scheme. I hope the US government steps in and puts the crooks in prison. Seriously, removing the caps right before the sale is a scheme with ICANN people paid under the table.
• BrandoElFollito 7y ago
  My thought is "and so what?" Domains are a monoploy with outrageous fees for new TLDs. This is what should be fought and not the fact they one of the TLDs is under the control of yet another entity.
• throwaway85728 7y ago
  Can somebody help understand the pricing of domains? Reading the threads, I came across various prices. In case of .com, I saw ICANN fees of $0.18, Verisign fees of $7.85, and then there are registrar fees, eg. Godaddy $18.17. Is Godaddy paying Verisign or only ICANN? The reason I'm confused is that the threads mention domain brokers hoard domains because they are so cheap ($0.18?). On the other hand, I understand Verisign is operating .com, so they would always get their fees as well?
  • wmf 7y ago
    All domains go through the registry; for .com that's Verisign. So you can't get a .com domain cheaper than ~$8. Nobody is hoarding domains for cents, although domain tasting was a hot thing for a while.
• Russelfuture 7y ago
  Ok, Read the story/read the comments - the 1.135 billion $USD got my attention. First "WTF?" was same as "corndoge": Who the hell is "The Internet Society?" Lotta reading... and then the penny hit the floor: "Ah! A bunch of clever boys in Cali got the US gov. to give them admin. of the ".org" domain name that folks used if they hacked/outbid/cheatedoutof their .com TLD? (I lost mine to Serbian jewel thieves..) It became the PIR, and the guys running it got to drop the $ from registrations into a non-profit, and claim administrator salaries, board seats, nice Cali. offices, and all the perks. But their was both risk and work involved, and the non-profit status, meant they cculdn't pocket profits and make a big score. But along comes this idea: They can flog the ".org" registry, and its recurring revenue-stream, to a "for-profit" entity that a couple of insiders create just for this purpose. "Whoopdedo" notes that dns data indicates each user of .org is valued at about $135. Based on telco and cable company purchases, that valuation per subscriber looks about right. The two insiders take the valuation data to moneyboys, and suggest that the rev. stream can be jacked maybe 10% per year, best case. The moneyguys agree to fund the deal into the 10 digit range, and the project gets the greenlight. The plan offers "The Internet Society" a massive payday, which as even their own pressnotes say, will give them the same revenue, but without having to do any work, deal with actual users, or take any operational or legal risk of any kind. As another users suggests - They can "raise awareness" from nice Cali. offices, and then break for lunch. But the whole deal smells a bit of sulfur and hotwind, no? Or did I miss something? How did the "Internet Society" get its "ownership" of the .org TLD registry? Did they buy it? If they bought it, then for how much? From my understanding, they just got given it, by the US Gov't., with a mandate to run it at cost, more or less. So, as some suggest, there is a risk that the $1.1 billion could be considered a pure profit - which would seem to put their non-profit status at risk. Also, by selling the very thing they were established to administer, that should maybe terminate their mandate, and one might also argue that the $1.1 billion represents funds that belong to existing .org registrants, and should be refunded to them all. The "Internet Society" is not a for-profit corporation, right? So where do they get off by just wrapping up their administrator-role in a big package, and selling - without any bidding process even - to a couple of folks who promise to maybe raise the user-fees by 5 times the rate of inflation for the next few years? How do "Board Members" of the "Internet Society" actually get to become "Board Members" of the "Internet Society"? Who appoints them? Shareholders? Not likely. The note from the "Barnes" fellow is interesting. He was the "Security" guy at Cisco, apparently. Now, those guys at Cisco, I've heard of them. They sell all those American-designed routers that beacon all their traffic and meta-data back to the NSA servers. I'm sure that's a fine thing to do, as it keeps us safe from bad guys. But when I look at the details of this proposed deal, I start to wonder who the "bad guys" really are. I have an alternate "deal" idea: Fire all the "Board Members" of "The Internet Society". Tell them "Thank you for your contribution." and send them home. Replace them all with different folks who might be expected to have a better understanding of what their role should be. Just an idea. And it won't cost $1.135 billion USD. And it won't require the .org domain be re-priced.
• millettjon 7y ago
  Time for blockchain based DNS.
• Dwolb 7y ago
  From the “Why I Voted to Sell .ORG” article > This transaction will put that bigger mission on a solid footing — so that the Internet Society can provide much more substantive help to nonprofits than merely leasing domain names, and with more continuity over time. I’m really disappointed in this perspective - the mission is now growing outside of its current operations (ie conquesting) AND will now have a slug of cash which they’ve never properly managed before. The Internet needs them to be conservative stewards but they want to grow outside of that. Further more the article goes through “protections” that are in place for Ethos to keep prices reasonable. The issue is these protections aren’t all contractually obligated and even those written are weak. Of course private equity is going to get a return on capital on $1B invested. Their incentive is to push the boundary as far as it can possibly go to find the profit maximizing point. Would love to hear more arguments for and against.
  • travisporter 7y ago
    I read this as “everything has a price.” Disappointing.
• crucialfelix 7y ago
  Well thank God: wasm.org already forwards to webassembly
• stevespang 7y ago
  Why not work towards a new domain name that would be controlled only by the non-profit stakeholders so as to "pull the rug" right out from under the sale to Ethos ? All non-profits would then transfer over to this new domain and it would become the new defacto locale for non profits, leaving Ethos holding a wet paper bag, as they deserve.
• jellicle 7y ago
  A lot of comments in these threads talking about the "maximum price increases" as 10%/year. There aren't any maximum price increases. .org can increase to $5000/name/year, or $50,000.
• glitcher 7y ago
  And where are bigger news outlets to be found when it comes to reporting on this? Who besides those of us inside the tech bubble have even heard of the issue, much less would even care? It reminds me of the struggle to communicate to the general population the issue of Net Neutrality. That issue seemed to enjoy MUCH more coverage and yet (anecdotally), all my non-techie family and friends still didn't know what it was. Recently I sent a "story idea" submission to NPR to ask them to cover this issue in a way that can help illuminate the dark corners of this story to the broader population. Unfortunately so many of the other major news outlets are so sensationalized that I wouldn't trust them to report on it accurately. What other organizations have a broad reach that we should be contacting to encourage covering this? I don't know anyone outside tech checking in with eff.org on a regular basis, and many certainly don't have save.org on their radar. Any suggestions?
• bittercynic 7y ago
  Anyone know what is the likely outcome if I pay in advance for several years to keep my .org domains?
• Ericson2314 7y ago
  Can Firefox and chromium give OpenNic a bump with DNS over https? I am just learning about OpenNic, so apologies if what I said makes no sense.
• mobilefriendly 7y ago
  In my experience a lot of corporate and government wrong-doing is targeted/revealed around Thanksgiving holidays, so that people and the media don't notice.
• tatersolid 7y ago
  I control a three-letter .org domain on behalf of a non-profit. Was offered $500K for it a decade ago, by a for-profit entity. .org has never meant non-profit in reality. Considering the non-profit this domain supports is 95 years old and the domain was registered in 1995, though, selling it and switching is a non-starter. Unnecessarily annoying times ahead.
• smsm42 7y ago
  Anybody can ELI5 me why it's such a huge deal? I mean .org does not have any special meaning for a while now. Anybody can have a .org. Most commercial entities don't do that because .org kinda implies "not business" which is contrary to the impression most businesses want, but there's no limitation on that if any commercial entity wants to have a .org, they can. TLDs are virtually unrestricted now (not entirely but close to it), so you can have me.sexy and spaghetti-monster.church if you wanted to. I know there were price caps on .org, but frankly unless you're in heavy SEO/marketing game - which most nonprofits aren't - domain name costs aren't that major expense even for commercial companies. And dozens, now hundreds of TLDs are being managed by commercial entities without Internet descending into chaos and ruin. So why does the Internet world "despair" about this thing?