3 ms·

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 lik

by 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.
jobigoud 7y ago
What was sold is PIR, "Public Interest Registry", which controls not only .org but also .ngo, .ong, and some other language specific TLDs.

by sgc 7y ago

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.

jobigoud 7y ago

What was sold is PIR, "Public Interest Registry", which controls not only .org but also .ngo, .ong, and some other language specific TLDs.