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The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed t

The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest. The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest. ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for registrations and stop trying to tax .org registrants with mandatory charitable donations to a dubious charity.

reitzensteinm 7y ago
Further, the sale of the asset to a third party is essentially laundering the extraction of maximum value. The buyer pays the NPV when operated as a profit focused enterprise, then insulates the ISOC from blowback when it actually does this. The ISOC can then turn around and feign betrayal with the rest of us, its pockets full of money.
- ohashi 7y ago
  This is the internet. We don't forget things like this. People's names have been attached to it, like Andrew Sullivan (CEO) and Richard Barnes (board member defending it). We know exactly who fucked over everyone here, they admit it publicly. There's no pretending about it, Andrew was more than happy to sell out the non profit space. Just read the interview: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/isoc_ceo_dot_org_sale/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/isoc_ceo_dot_org_sa...
  - MrEldritch 7y ago
    This is the Internet. Everyone will have forgotten this besides, like, five people before this time 2020.
    - jtbayly 7y ago
      2020/tomorrow. FTFY
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      This is Hacker News, pretty much everyone will have forgotten about this relatively soon but whenever anything even remotely related to the event is posted about one of the people who has not forgotten will say about how they are still annoyed with X and that X is immoral, which will then cause someone to say what is wrong with X, and then someone else will go into excruciating detail on what is wrong with X and lots of people will chime in to say they hate X too. Which I think is pretty much things working as intended. And as a result, no they won't exactly be remembered forever but they don't get to go down the memory hole either.
    - xtiansimon 7y ago
      I’ll have a reminder each time the website I created for volunteers helping a non-profit is up for renewal.
- gowld 7y ago
  "laundering" is the fundamental purpose of incorporation. The various forms of corporations are various ways to detach responsibilities normally required of natural persons.
cryptonector 7y ago
Operating .org in the public interest in the past doesn't mean that it has zero value today. "The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows" not so much that "[ISOC is] operating it in the interest of the ISOC" but that PIR may not be interested in operating .org in the public interest. How is ISOC a dubious charity?
- LegitShady 7y ago
  >but that PIR may not be interested in operating .org in the public interest. Oh who did this organization with a duty to steward .org for public interest sell it to? How can you separate that duty from the action of selling it to a third party without that duty? It's an interesting hair to split.
  - cryptonector 7y ago
    That's fair, but it's not proof that ISOC wasn't running .org in the public interest, only that if they had been, they stopped when they sold it to a party that looks set not to. "They were so good right until the point where they stopped being so good."
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      >but it's not proof that ISOC wasn't running .org in the public interest, only that if they had been, they stopped The action selling it to another org without that duty is abdication of that duty and they should not have had authority to sell it. The specific circumstances only make it worse.
      - cryptonector 7y ago
        Talk about not responsive. All you did here is restate your previous point.
        LegitShady 7y ago
        All you did was state that their previous actions aren't proof of the future, when we are talking about them having sold .org already. Their abdicating stewardship to a group that doesn't have a duty to steward is evidence enough and saying "well they used to" is off topic and not interesting. No need for new arguments when you have none.
evross 7y ago
It's worth noting that the former ICANN CEO, Fadi Chehadé is highly involved in this sale. This timeline also seems to suggest that current members of ICANN are also biased towards the sale of the .org domain, ICANN may not be interested in the views of the people who currently have .org domains. From https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-.. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-.... : "March 2019: ICANN receives 3,300 comments uniformly opposed to the change and 6 in favor of removing price caps, and sides with the 0.2% minority. May 2019: PIR responded to the comments with an open letter that said, “We are a mission-based non-profit, and would never betray the trust that you have put into .ORG and us.” On 7 May, Chehadé registered the domain for EthosCapital.com. On 13 May, ICANN decided to lift the price caps anyway. On 14 May, Ethos Capital was incorporated as a new investment firm founded by Brooks. Ethos Capital has two staff: Brooks and Nora Abusitta-Ouri, a former ICANN SVP who later worked for Chehadé and was also a classmate of Chehadé."
- evross 7y ago
  I'd recommend going to https://savedotorg.org https://savedotorg.org and sharing it if possible. There will be a public call through this campaign for people interested in learning more about this sale on December 5th at 12pm pacific time.
- Joeri 7y ago
  So basically ICANN itself is corrupt and must be replaced wholesale with a proper public interest steward? Maybe people are protesting the wrong thing. The sale of .org is a symptom, the underlying cause is a bad regulatory framework for internet names.
  - Accujack 7y ago
    Exactly. Internet naming is a situation where artificial value is assigned to a nearly valueless resource for the purpose of collecting rent. There's no technical reason we can't have multiple systems for translating names into addresses. There's no longer any technical reason for having neatly organized dot separated addresses based on TLDs. Allowing the translation of any text string into an address is entirely possible with present day computing power, and a truly distributed system similar to the global routing table would work to organize different providers announcing their own name domains. Maintaining the old DNS TLD domains is stupid and subject to manipulation by corporations and corrupt politicians. Like this sale.
wpietri 7y ago
Break-even pricing was my first thought, too. But I think the .org registry has to be priced at least modestly higher than business-y domains (e.g., .com), because otherwise you'll find people using it for all sorts of for-profit stuff, reducing its signalling value. But there's no reason that money can't go right back into basic infrastructure. For example, after the Heartbleed bug we learned that OpenSSL was receiving about $2k/year in donations. Surely there are obvious core open-source projects that could use reliable funding: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund-openssl/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-...
- gowld 7y ago
  Why does "signalling value" matter at all? If a business gets value by masquerading as an "org", then that value is sure worth more than $10 or whatever, and surely the commercial entities are better able to pay than non-profit orgs, so making org cost more only hurts orgs, not businesses.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Depends on which business. You're correct for businesses who invest heavily in their brand and have just one domain. But you're very wrong for businesses that have a lot of domains and use the domain for credibility. E.g., spammers, typo-squatters, fraudsters, fly-by-night retailers, etc. And it's those that will really bring down the value of the TLD.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

Further, the sale of the asset to a third party is essentially laundering the extraction of maximum value. The buyer pays the NPV when operated as a profit focused enterprise, then insulates the ISOC from blowback when it actually does this. The ISOC can then turn around and feign betrayal with the rest of us, its pockets full of money.

ohashi 7y ago
This is the internet. We don't forget things like this. People's names have been attached to it, like Andrew Sullivan (CEO) and Richard Barnes (board member defending it). We know exactly who fucked over everyone here, they admit it publicly. There's no pretending about it, Andrew was more than happy to sell out the non profit space. Just read the interview: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/isoc_ceo_dot_org_sale/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/isoc_ceo_dot_org_sa...
- MrEldritch 7y ago
  This is the Internet. Everyone will have forgotten this besides, like, five people before this time 2020.
  - jtbayly 7y ago
    2020/tomorrow. FTFY
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    This is Hacker News, pretty much everyone will have forgotten about this relatively soon but whenever anything even remotely related to the event is posted about one of the people who has not forgotten will say about how they are still annoyed with X and that X is immoral, which will then cause someone to say what is wrong with X, and then someone else will go into excruciating detail on what is wrong with X and lots of people will chime in to say they hate X too. Which I think is pretty much things working as intended. And as a result, no they won't exactly be remembered forever but they don't get to go down the memory hole either.
  - xtiansimon 7y ago
    I’ll have a reminder each time the website I created for volunteers helping a non-profit is up for renewal.
gowld 7y ago
"laundering" is the fundamental purpose of incorporation. The various forms of corporations are various ways to detach responsibilities normally required of natural persons.

cryptonector 7y ago

Operating .org in the public interest in the past doesn't mean that it has zero value today. "The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows" not so much that "[ISOC is] operating it in the interest of the ISOC" but that PIR may not be interested in operating .org in the public interest. How is ISOC a dubious charity?

LegitShady 7y ago
>but that PIR may not be interested in operating .org in the public interest. Oh who did this organization with a duty to steward .org for public interest sell it to? How can you separate that duty from the action of selling it to a third party without that duty? It's an interesting hair to split.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  That's fair, but it's not proof that ISOC wasn't running .org in the public interest, only that if they had been, they stopped when they sold it to a party that looks set not to. "They were so good right until the point where they stopped being so good."
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    >but it's not proof that ISOC wasn't running .org in the public interest, only that if they had been, they stopped The action selling it to another org without that duty is abdication of that duty and they should not have had authority to sell it. The specific circumstances only make it worse.
    - cryptonector 7y ago
      Talk about not responsive. All you did here is restate your previous point.
      - LegitShady 7y ago
        All you did was state that their previous actions aren't proof of the future, when we are talking about them having sold .org already. Their abdicating stewardship to a group that doesn't have a duty to steward is evidence enough and saying "well they used to" is off topic and not interesting. No need for new arguments when you have none.

evross 7y ago

It's worth noting that the former ICANN CEO, Fadi Chehadé is highly involved in this sale. This timeline also seems to suggest that current members of ICANN are also biased towards the sale of the .org domain, ICANN may not be interested in the views of the people who currently have .org domains. From https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-.. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-.... : "March 2019: ICANN receives 3,300 comments uniformly opposed to the change and 6 in favor of removing price caps, and sides with the 0.2% minority. May 2019: PIR responded to the comments with an open letter that said, “We are a mission-based non-profit, and would never betray the trust that you have put into .ORG and us.” On 7 May, Chehadé registered the domain for EthosCapital.com. On 13 May, ICANN decided to lift the price caps anyway. On 14 May, Ethos Capital was incorporated as a new investment firm founded by Brooks. Ethos Capital has two staff: Brooks and Nora Abusitta-Ouri, a former ICANN SVP who later worked for Chehadé and was also a classmate of Chehadé."

evross 7y ago
I'd recommend going to https://savedotorg.org https://savedotorg.org and sharing it if possible. There will be a public call through this campaign for people interested in learning more about this sale on December 5th at 12pm pacific time.
Joeri 7y ago
So basically ICANN itself is corrupt and must be replaced wholesale with a proper public interest steward? Maybe people are protesting the wrong thing. The sale of .org is a symptom, the underlying cause is a bad regulatory framework for internet names.
- Accujack 7y ago
  Exactly. Internet naming is a situation where artificial value is assigned to a nearly valueless resource for the purpose of collecting rent. There's no technical reason we can't have multiple systems for translating names into addresses. There's no longer any technical reason for having neatly organized dot separated addresses based on TLDs. Allowing the translation of any text string into an address is entirely possible with present day computing power, and a truly distributed system similar to the global routing table would work to organize different providers announcing their own name domains. Maintaining the old DNS TLD domains is stupid and subject to manipulation by corporations and corrupt politicians. Like this sale.

wpietri 7y ago

Break-even pricing was my first thought, too. But I think the .org registry has to be priced at least modestly higher than business-y domains (e.g., .com), because otherwise you'll find people using it for all sorts of for-profit stuff, reducing its signalling value. But there's no reason that money can't go right back into basic infrastructure. For example, after the Heartbleed bug we learned that OpenSSL was receiving about $2k/year in donations. Surely there are obvious core open-source projects that could use reliable funding: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund-openssl/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/tech-...

gowld 7y ago
Why does "signalling value" matter at all? If a business gets value by masquerading as an "org", then that value is sure worth more than $10 or whatever, and surely the commercial entities are better able to pay than non-profit orgs, so making org cost more only hurts orgs, not businesses.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Depends on which business. You're correct for businesses who invest heavily in their brand and have just one domain. But you're very wrong for businesses that have a lot of domains and use the domain for credibility. E.g., spammers, typo-squatters, fraudsters, fly-by-night retailers, etc. And it's those that will really bring down the value of the TLD.