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ICANN board withholds consent for a change of control of the .org registry
- ohashi 7y agoAs someone who was really involved with this very early and was cited in the AG's letter (quite proud of that), I wanted to think and reflect about it for a moment. And talk about what's still happening and what it means: https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2020/05/01/reflecting-on-org-sale-being-blocked/ https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2020/05/01/reflecting-on-org-s...
- coldpie 7y agoIt's clearly time to demand that control of .org ownership be removed from Internet Society, right? Should we start moving towards disbanding ICANN and moving DNS control to some other entity? Internet Society has zero credibility now, and depending on how they handle the fallout from this, ICANN's credibility is likely to follow.
- cletus 7y agoWhat's the likelihood there'll still be a state investigation or a court case about this? What I'd love to see is the California AG pierce the anonymous ownership structure of Ethos Capital so we can see who really is behind it. The way this sailed through, it had to have insider influence. How dod this deal glide through ICANN (prior to its announcement)? Who made the decision to approve it? What paper trail is there? As much as I'm glad this deal was killed, we shouldn't stop here. Let's weed out and hold to account the weak, inept and corrupt who allowed this to go this far.
- IanSanders 7y agoIf a guilty party has to be identified, it will be, not necessarily the correct one. Malicious agents will just be more careful next time as they have more resources than anyone willing to look into this. The problem is systemic.
- bosswipe 7y agoICANN has been corrupt since John Postel died in 1998. Since then it has been run by lawyers in complete secrecy with their main goal being to maximize the rents they can squeeze out of DNS. People have been begging the California Attorney General to investigate ICANN's many corruptions for two decades now, it would be a shame if ICANN is able to use this high visibility decision to avoid scrutiny of it's previous criminal decision to allow unlimited price increases on .org.
- markdown 7y ago> Since then it has been run by lawyers in complete secrecy It seems that HN wants to help them with that. There isn't a single name in this entire thread. Why aren't we talking about the board members here? Why aren't we using their real names so that they can be personally held responsible for their decisions?
- renewiltord 7y agohttps://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/ https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/ Andrew Sullivan is the guy you want, though. He's the one pushing this deal.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rndgermandude 7y agoEvery single board member has to go. Every single one of them. At this point, it would be easier to just transfer over all the assets incl the PIR to an organization that is more worthy of our trust, such as the EFF. > It was for this reason that the board voted unanimously to approve the deal (aside from one trustee who is recused from PIR matters). https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/12/the-sale-of-pir-the-internet-society-board-perspective/ https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/12/the-sale-of-pir...
- vxNsr 7y agoEveryone involved should still be stripped of their position/title. Totally unacceptable that this was even on the table. The WSJ editorial board had an Op-ed about this[0], and tried very hard to make it seem like it was an overreach by the AG and it was vital that ICANN go through with this. I was honestly surprised, they're generally level-headed and while they do side with wall street over main street they don't make fallacious arguments. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/working-the-webs-referees-11588200958 https://www.wsj.com/articles/working-the-webs-referees-11588...
- wavesplash 7y agoWSJ leans whatever way News Corp wants post 2007 acquisition.
- tankenmate 7y agoAlso of note, NewsCorp sends lawyers and strategists to every ICANN meeting, and has since at least 2010, if not before.
- stirlo 7y agoPossibly because they used to own MySpace and got in the habit?
- evolve2k 7y agoReally? that’s shocking. Do you have any sources you can share that confirm this?
- tankenmate 7y agoI think there are maybe attendance lists for some of the sub meetings? As to myself, I have first hand knowledge they were there; I talked to some of them face to face at some of the ICANN meetings. Anyone can attend most ICANN meetings, they are open and public.
- Pxtl 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rasz 7y agoWait a ~year, move non-profit out of California/USA, try again.
- quezzle 7y agoCause it’s the finish of icann’s credibility if they do.
- p4bl0 7y agoVictory! This is an awesome news, and a very nice one to wake up to on the 1st of May ;).
- renewiltord 7y agoISOC is an unacceptable steward. Time to take .org away from them.
- noah_buddy 7y agoThis is the only intelligent move ICANN can make, especially considering the public out lash (including from state officials in CA). It's actually astounding that the organization managing .org actually thought they could get away with bold-faced cronyism so clearly opposed to the principles of the internet. That said, we certainly have to watch out for more acts like this.
- r00fus 7y agoNot just that, we have to investigate why ICANN thought they could get away with this. They will try again when convenient, otherwise.
- Kiro 7y agoI don't know anything about this but what has ICANN to gain from this sale?
- sjwright 7y agoWrong question. The right question is what do the specific individuals at ICANN have to gain?
- nolok 7y agoIt's not ICANN the entity, if it provided a real benefit to it the outcry would have been much smaller. It's people inside ICANN abusing their position to strip ICANN and the web of things worth a lot of money for their own benefit.
- 7y ago
- sneak 7y agoThe fact that the central authority made the right call in this instance doesn’t ultimately mean that the central authority isn’t still dangerous. I hope this serves as a wake-up call to everyone who got scared by this.
- geofft 7y agoCentral authorities are the worst form of governance, except for all the others.
- SEJeff 7y ago"God save the king!" - OP, probably
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoActually some of the others are just objectively better. Like local authorities which can adapt rules to local conditions and give people the option to exit and go somewhere else if the local rules are sufficiently outside what they find reasonable. It's like asking whether you'd prefer your landlord to have a national monopoly on land. (No.)
- TeMPOraL 7y agoLocal authority is still centralized wrt. a local problem :). It's always nice to have options by being able to deal with multiple people... except when a given issue becomes a tragedy of the commons or some other kind of coordination problem, at which point you really want to have a single superior authority above the ones you were dealing with. This applies recursively. So you want to have one city authority, but many cities; one county authority, but many counties; one state authority, but many states; one country authority, but many countries...
- xxpor 7y agoOh yeah, balkanized local government has worked so well for the bay area.
- Thorentis 7y agoI am incredibly surprised to see this good news. Finally an organisation made a decision that was in the public interest. Hopefully more decisions like this can be made in the future.
- kick 7y agoYour voice matters! This victory was largely because of collective action on behalf of the people making such a fuss. Anyone who wrote to California's Attorney General should feel really proud of themselves right now; letters like yours likely directly caused this.
- Waterluvian 7y agoMy non lawyer understanding is that Attorneys General effectively have an infinitely long list of crime to go after. The volume of outcry is an incredibly effective way to get your cause pushed up that list.
- adrr 7y agoI hope this doesn't stop the AG from completing their investigation of ICANN which is a non-profit based in California. They should still subpoena all the communications at ICANN related to the proposed ownership transfer of .org that is outlined in the original letter to ICANN. https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/ca-ago-to-icann-board-23jan20-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/ca-ago-...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- syshum 7y agoI am sure that ICANN is hoping the matter is just dropped now.
- rndgermandude 7y agoI am sure the PIR/ISOC and Ethos Capital are hoping this even more
- rvnx 7y agoA couple of dozens of millions of dollars in lobbying to their favorite parties may help them to think the right way
- mehrdadn 7y agoI've been confused following this story... so which entities have the ultimate power/responsibility to authorize/veto this move? Every time I think the story is finalized, there seems to be a new twist.
- ggm 7y agoI hold .org domains, and I felt somewhat annoyed I wasn't consulted as a decisive stakeholder by ISOC, and I also consider myself an ISOC member and have worked with these people on and off. I know these people from email lists, from f2f at IETF, from other policy meetings. I just didn't expect them to do this. I found the lack of engagement prior to the transaction truly shocking. I understand some of the reasons, even if I disagree with them: I think the ISOC board did not breach the law. But I do think they broke an implicit social contract. The thing is: there is a downside. This was going to create a large abiding fund for ISOC. It was going to create something of real world value. Alibeit at the expense of some principle but there is now a consequence, something which might have been good won't happen directly, or as quickly. I also think its premature to assume some kind of sale or change in PIR/.org will not actually still happen: they just have to do more work. And, probably, for lower $value since its no longer as simple. (I don't think in the current economic climate the price will be as good)
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> The thing is: there is a downside. This was going to create a large abiding fund for ISOC. It was going to create something of real world value. Alibeit at the expense of some principle but there is now a consequence, something which might have been good won't happen directly, or as quickly. This was their argument the whole time, but it seems incredibly weak. The money from the sale was presumably the net present value of the future domain revenue (minus whatever losses from the apparent self-dealing). If they were going to keep it as an endowment and only spend the interest so that it wouldn't run out over time then it wouldn't be anything more than the revenue they already had. Whereas if they were going to spend it all at once then it seems a lot like mortgaging the future. On top of that, if they really wanted to do that then they didn't need to sell the registry -- just take out a loan. Interest rates are super low right now. If the thing they wanted to do with the money wasn't so pressing that it could justify borrowing money to do it immediately instead of letting the money come in over time then it couldn't have been so pressing as to justify the sale either.
- ggm 7y agoYou're completely correct that it was going to be NPV neutral and an endowment. But the structural independence that ISOC would then have had, and the freedom from constraints of income tied to a service delivery changes how you plan and what kind of long-term plans you can make. So I sort-of agree and disagree. It wasn't really a huge windfall outcome, viewed as a perpetuating fund. But it was a huge structural change for ISOC, and very possibly the IETF too.
- wl 7y agoThe Internet Society has proven itself to be an untrustworthy steward of .org by even contemplating this now derailed sale. How can .org be put under control of a non-profit public benefit corporation with a mission restricted solely to running the gTLD?
- noah_buddy 7y agoI was thinking the same. This very act shows a severe lack of judgment in stewardship. ICANN should find another more deserving, more trustworthy organization to oversee .org.
- syshum 7y agoISOC is also over other important things including ietf. Instead of moving .org. There need to be some accountiblty and/or leadership change inside of ISOC
- renewiltord 7y agoWe'll deal with that later. Right now, ISOC needs weakening. We need to shift .org over to https://www.ccor.org/ https://www.ccor.org/
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoSo, will they announce selling IETF to Elsevier tomorrow?
- miles 7y ago> How can .org be put under control of a non-profit public benefit corporation with a mission restricted solely to running the gTLD? The Cooperative Corporation of dot-org Registrants (CCOR) https://www.ccor.org https://www.ccor.org https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902032
- b3n 7y agoAre there any other TLDs that are under the control of a non-profit in this way?
- joshuaellinger 7y agoAnd sometimes the good guys win! I expect that the fallout from this will also be that the current board of ISOC gets replaced. But maybe that's too much to hope for.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoSadly only sometimes.
- staticautomatic 7y agoI support this but how does the State of California have standing?
- nieve 7y agoICANN is incorporated in California, has their headquarters there, and does significant business. Any of the three would be sufficient, but the incorporation was called out.
- aspenmayer 7y ago‘ICANN received the letter last week, and is fully cooperating with the Attorney General's request for information. ICANN is subject to regulation by the CA-AGO, which is responsible for supervising charitable organizations in California. ICANN is a California public benefit, nonprofit corporation. ICANN and PIR have agreements in place regarding PIR's operation of the .ORG registry and other registries (PIR Registry Agreements).’ https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2020-01-30-en https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2020-01-30-en
- comex 7y agoThe original letter [1] explains it. In short, ICANN is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation. At least in theory, there was a possibility that for ICANN to approve the sale would violate the public benefit obligations set out in its bylaws, and the state Attorney General has the power to investigate that. [1] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/becerra-to-botterman-marby-15apr20-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/becerra...
- foobarbazetc 7y agoWow. Unexpected. Didn’t know we could still have nice things.
- jtl999 7y agoHopefully this we'll hear of the .ORG sale, and it can be filed under "risky investment averted" Wonder if there's an appeals process in place.
- axaxs 7y agoGreat news! Now they should find new stewards for .org, since PIR/ISOC have shown they cannot be trusted to do the right thing.
- kyrra 7y agoAs someone who hasn't read much on this, why is selling the .org registry to a for profit company bad? My understanding is that .com and others are held by for profit companies. What other issues were there?
- wmf 7y agoThe company trying to buy .org was planning to raise prices. (You could have googled this.)
- kyrra 7y agoI did find some complaints back to last year, but there were lots of "issues". Why is raising prices bad. How does that warrant preventing this sale? It's not like .org lives in a bubble. There are many other TLDs that they have to compete with on price.
- ascorbic 7y agoThey don't compete on price for renewals when you own one of the 10 million existing domains.
- ulkesh 7y agoBecause it’s not just any TLD. It’s one of the very few special ones that has a very clearly defined origination and governance (well it did for the first decade or so at least). Capitalism + the underpinnings of the Internet don’t exactly play well together (hence the need for clearly defined net neutrality codified by law). And arbitrarily raising prices on already existing domains registered by people and non-profits who bought in when there were rules in place about such prices is actually wrong.
- pmachinery 7y agoAs in previous discussions on this, some people seem to have some strange utopian misconceptions about .ORG. Likewise whoever wrote this false statement on Wikipedia: "The domain [sic] was originally intended for non-profit entities, but this restriction was removed in August 2019." In fact registration under .ORG has been unrestricted for most of its existence, even before it was taken over by PIR around 20 years ago. The complaints about potential price rises are also totally bizarre when .ORG has been for years one of the most overpriced and price hiked extensions, significantly more expensive than .COM, and popular country code TLDs like .uk, .nl, .de. The "non-profit" aspect is a total red herring.
- praseodym 7y agoPIR’s response is at https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/statements-in-response-to-april-30-2020-decision-from-icann https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/statements-in-response-t...
- justinclift 7y ago> Today’s action opens the door for ICANN to unilaterally reject future transfer requests based on agenda-driven pressure by outside parties. Awww shucks. They're pissed ICANN realised they might not get away with this one so played it safe this time around.
- lovehashbrowns 7y agoIt's so creepy how they always spin these sort of decisions. > This decision will suffocate innovation and deter future investment in the domain industry. I'm sure we'll really miss the lack of innovation in registering a damn domain name.
- ohashi 7y agoErik Brooks at Donuts and Fadi's only innovation was exploiting the DNS to make more money by opening up new gTLDs and increasing prices. That's what we stopped today. Good job.
- cl3m 7y agoThanks to anyone who helped! That's great.
- tenant 7y agoI don't really understand this too well but I suppose the question I'd have from what I've read is who was going to get the $360 million? Cui bono?
- ohashi 7y agoThe Internet Society (ISOC) would get the 1.135 billion dollars, of which, $360 million would be debt piled onto PIR which was going to be sold to Ethos Capital who nobody knows where the money is coming from and has a murky corporate structure being run by ICANN insiders who claims to have the non profit world's best interests at heart and it's not all about profit.
- tenant 7y agothanks for the information
- sjwright 7y agoThis is a problem that pervades all forms of organisational stewardship. It's true for ICANN, it's true for all forms of national government, it's even true for ivy league universities. Eventually they all end up being run in the interests of the currently elected administration rather than the principles and long-term interests of the organisation. It's impossible to completely fix, but there are a few ways to slow down the rot, for example: 1. Require extreme transparency (where possible) 2. Make decision-making difficult enough that everyone complains about how slow and indecisive the body is 3. Structure the administrators' roles and remuneration so that they have long term rather than short term financial incentives. 4. Don't offer large salaries to anyone. The role shouldn't attract people who care about salaries, even if it means you don't attract the "best talent". That "best talent" was probably going to wreck the organisation anyway.
- wjnc 7y agoA few suggestions: - Define the long-term goals of an organisation explicitly. - Interpret these narrowly. - Give stakeholders a vote, both in the election of officials and on certain topics. I would argue that there exist (hundreds of) thousands of usually small, non-profit organisations that are run pretty efficiently. I think of pretty much all of the social and sport clubs for adults and kids I know of. A lot of interpersonal drama, but also countless of volunteers and people just working for their local community organised by their hobbies. So there's something about scale and dissociation with the original goals going on.
- sjwright 7y agoI would have thought all of those points would apply to ICANN. The issue isn't having clearly defined goals, the issue is that for some value of N, the Nth administration of an organisation eventually behave like exploiters rather than stewards. They don't care about your silly words.
- wjnc 7y agoSo what factors influence N? Because I point out (perhaps trivial, but a lot of our social life is organised that way) organisations where N-->Inf.
- sunstone 7y agoThe writing was on the wall a few months ago but still it's nice to see that this travesty has finally been given the boot.
- blargmaster33 7y agoSenators can not be charged with insider trading as they have exempted themselves from the law..... Don't blame capitalism for corrupted politicians.
- blargmaster33 7y agoObama sent pallets it cash to Iran!
- aurizon 7y agoThis blocked the sale of the .org registry - in effect the sale was an extinction level event for the registry - we are all glad it was blcoked and one hopes they will not try a backassward method to gain the sale. Think of it, a $360,000,000 debt, let's say at a 10% rate to some friends = $36,000,000 interest force sucked from the domain every year at the least and over 10 years another $36,000,000 annually (the interest will decline linearly). Add to that salaries of the god-like high order people managing it - all worth at least 1-2 million a year and the servers, techs etc. = on the order of $100,000,000 a year. All this on the back of the ~~10 million .org name holders all for nothing another $10 added on. The usual business must continue as a non profit it was $12 per year for a domain, so this will now go to $22.00. it nearly doubles the cost and economics tells us that sales will halve. So now we have 5 million under the yoke of $100 million in costs = $20 each + the $12 = $32.00 and a further decrease. Sure some will pay, many will say nowego away now. As they say, an ELE has been dodged - stay alert for version 2...
- hubbabubbarex 7y agoICANN ties to multiple tec giants is quite interesting. Please people research, you will found very fast reason for this.
- DeathArrow 7y agoThey did so because public outrage. There's nothing to guarantee they won't try it again or other similar maneuvers. The gist is the DNS model is broken.
- ivanstame 7y agoICANN has lost its credibility.
- stevespang 7y agoNow watch the crooks file a lawsuit claiming breach of contract against ICANN.
- cybert00th 7y agoYes! .org domain names are safe from the corporate raider sharks for now
- JohnL4 7y ago"for now" being key. Nothing like this is ever fixed.
- john4532452 7y agoThis is a big win, but do not forget Google is in the board of ICANN.
- DarkmSparks 7y agooverwhelming relief they "won" this one, deep grief in the knowledge there is no way the leeches give up on it.
- kunkurus 7y agoI think the comments section is closed on the ICANN's blog page.
- drawkbox 7y agoThe ringwraiths will be back, but for now the shire is safe.
- ineedasername 7y agoNow they need to move on to the next problem: Leadership an governance that allowed this whole mess to happen in the first place. Without that, there's no reason the same players involved can't just pay lip service to concerns, come up with an equivalent proposal, and try this again.
- heraclius 6y agoBravo!
- ludditetech 6y agoWow, was a sad day when I first read this was happening, cant believe it, good things can still happen. Awesome!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 128384n 6y agoTemporary. Won't last cause there's no laws stopping them. This is one of the only first and there will many more attempts to privatize the internet.