16 ms·

How We Saved Dot Org

1187 points by thomasahle 6y ago

eps 6y ago
No formal investigation into the ICANN corruption that led to this situation in the first place?
- lvs 6y ago
  There's no way this is a durable win without some thorough investigation, post mortem about how this nearly happened, and corrective actions.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Cali AG was looking into it.
  - wahern 6y ago
    According to the AG's April 15, 2020 letter, an investigation was already completed. > To that end, my office conducted an investigation of ICANN and its role in approving the transfer of the .ORG Registry Agreement from the Public Interest Registry ("PIR") (the supporting organization to the Internet Society ("ISOC")) to Ethos Capital https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AG%20Becerra%20Letter%20to%20ICANN.pdf https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AG%20... That letter ends with a warning that the AG would "continue to evaluate" the matter. Considering the ICANN board rejected the sale April 30[1], two weeks after the letter, I suspect the AG's office is no longer looking into the matter. Because the sale was never completed, and everything else seems to be business as usual, I don't think there's anything for the AG to continue looking into. The AG's job is to make sure charitable trusts adhere to their purpose, not to police potential impropriety that doesn't materially effect the trust. (They basically play the role of a shareholder, who in regular corporations can sue if the corporation doesn't adhere to the articles of incorporation; or the role of a beneficiary in a regular trust, who can sue if the trustee misappropriates the assets.) I'm also not sure if there's any criminal exposure here. Usually self-dealing is a civil matter, even for charitable trusts, unless it involves some other criminal act--e.g. fraud, but in this case nobody really thinks the board was being duped by the former ICANN CEO. If there was potential criminality then probably the AG wasn't confident it could make a case beyond a reasonable doubt without an actual sale and evidence about how .org would have been administered in fact. [1] https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2020-04-30-en https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2.... Announcement at https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-of-control-of-the-public-interest-registry-pir https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consen...
- sprash 6y ago
  The only correct answer is to switch to decentralized solutions like namecoin. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Any "formal investigation" will be a temporary fix at best. ICANN can do what it wants and it always will.
  - troquerre 6y ago
    Have you checked out Handshake? It’s a decentralized DNS experiment that launched this year and already has adoption from domain registrars like 101domain.com and Encirca
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      "Handshake uses proof-of-work mining, as it is currently the most reliable way to do compact light client proofs. Proof of work uses computational power, a lot of it." No thanks.
wolco2 6y ago
The fees on .org are expensive compared to the other top level domains com/net I recently switched from org to the countrycode version for a domain that was available and saved half of the cost.
- reidjs 6y ago
  So $1 per month instead of $2?
  - nso 6y ago
    Not everyone counts their holdings in USD. That price difference may be what sets a launched and abandoned project apart. One of my neighbors is 17 and interested in coding and computers. I'd say their family MAYBE brings in 250 USD a month -- but probably less. A dollar can be a lot.
    - rodone 6y ago
      Yeah, let's get private equity involved, that'll make it cheaper for sure.
      - Tostino 6y ago
        What is this in reference to?
        edoceo 6y ago
        The .org deal this whole thread is about. PE tried to get their dirty hands on this TLD
        abeyer 6y ago
        The linked article, perhaps?
    - Kwpolska 6y ago
      Does your neighbor really need a domain, and does it have to be a .org? You can do web stuff with free or ultra-cheap domains. And most hosting services will cost much more than the $0.67 or $0.85 you pay per month for a .com or .org respectively (at CloudFlare Domains).
breck 6y ago
Ah yes, bravo EFF, you've won another battle barely keeping us at the status quo. When are you going to stop playing whack-a-mole trying to defend against every assault on internet freedoms and go on the offensive and try to win the game for the good guys? We now have the ability to give the poorest child on earth access to the same information as the richest, and yet we allow industry to shackle us instead. It's time to demand intellectual freedom. #AbolishCopyright. #AbolishPatents. #AbolishImaginaryPropertyLaws
- ineedasername 6y ago
  If the EFF has to play whack-a-mole it's because there is no one single problem or threat vector to internet freedoms. Going on the offensive would require just as much whack-a-mole, fighting battles on many fronts, because there is no single issue they could fight for & win that would resolve the entire picture. And in the case of the .ORG issue, what would going on the offensive even have looked like? How would the EFF have fought off an attempt by a private equity firm to obtain & abuse stewardship over the TLD?
  - breck 6y ago
    > there is no one single problem or threat vector to internet freedoms There is one and only one problem: #ImaginaryPropertyLaws. What do all of the companies and organizations the EFF is constantly battling have in common? They all derive their power from #ImaginaryPropertyLaws and would all be disrupted without them.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      How is a domain imaginary property? Only one person can use it. Whether you call it property or something else, the end result is the same. How is internet censorship related to property? No more so than speech out in the real world is related to property rights. I'm not saying you're even wrong: You've simply made an extremely vague claim without explanation of what you mean or, in response to my comment, what single battle could be fought to resolve the issue. Your comment lacks the necessary criteria to even evaluate it.
noizejoy 6y ago
Seems like a nice victory in a single battle. But in the context of a much larger war in the TLD space it doesn’t seem like domain registrants are winning: https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/19/donuts-is-acquiring-afilias/ https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/19/donuts-is-acquiring-af... EDIT to add: http://domainincite.com/26107-westerdal-offloads-two-more-gtlds-to-donuts http://domainincite.com/26107-westerdal-offloads-two-more-gt...
- mr_toad 6y ago
  Maybe the best outcome will be that Donuts gobbles up everything, gets sued for being an illegal monopoly, broken up, and then the whole sordid registry system can be replaced.
  - noizejoy 6y ago
    Now you have me curious - what kind of better replacement do you have in mind?
    - wegs 6y ago
      Rules: 1) First-come-first-serve for your first handful of domains. Price is nominal (e.g. $1/year). 2) Increasing price with number of domains held. If I hold myname.com, it's $1. If I hold a thousand domain, the last 500 are at $1000/year. 3) Oversight for transfers. If sold, resale value is capped. Historic domains shouldn't be used for spam but perhaps go to archive.org or similar entities. 4) Managed by a government institution or not-for-profit with open meetings, salary caps, public records requests, and other (legally-enforceable) checks-and-balances. 5) Several TLDs, but you can't register in all of them. You can have mybusiness.com or mybusiness.mobi, but not all of the above. If I have the same business name as you (Apple records v. Apple computer), I go to a different TLD. 6) Rules for new TLDs. You can't pull the Coursera.org "We're a not-for-profit" shtick. Old domains grandfathered in. 7) Oversight/governing board with members from the EFF, FSF, OSF, and so on.
      - zrm 6y ago
longtailofsighs 6y ago
I love a lot of what the EFF does, but this campaign, and many other organizations involved in it got a lot wrong. The real issue, that in fairness the EFF leads with, was the change in the .org contract, not the sale itself. The most robust overview of the whole thing that I have read can be found here: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/05/01/no-real-winners-in-dot-org-decision/ https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/05/01/no-real-winner... Whether people like it or not the operation of the DNS, including .org, is a commercial endeavor. It doesn't make sense to focus only on .org, when a) Registrars not Registries are the real place to try and protect Registrants. b) Org has always been open to anyone, and their are likely as many, if not more civil society organizations in com, net, and other tlds.
- techsupporter 6y ago
  > Whether people like it or not the operation of the DNS, including .org, is a commercial endeavor. It's about disparate impact, as is the case in many things that have extensive histories around them. That .org was allowed to drift from its original mission of being the "catch-all / noncommercial" zone of the DNS doesn't mean we shouldn't work to nudge it back to that original ideal. At a minimum, allowing what is arguably a public good (DNS is a limited space, though less limited than phone numbers or RF allocations) to be transferred and barricaded is not good.
  - longtailofsighs 6y ago
    I don't disagree that the DNS is a public good. And fascinatingly unique in that it's global public good, reasonably successfully managed without government intervention. If the barricading is in reference to price increases, then again it's not the acquisition that enabled this, it was the contract change with ICANN. Registries transfer ownership all the time. .Biz was acquired by GoDaddy this year, and Afilias who run .info as well as the technical backend for .org was acquired by Donuts. No one made a fuss about these, which is another reason why the .org upset feels arbitrary. Is there something inherently bad with those acquisitions? I'm not sure I understand the drifting comment. .Org continues to position itself as a place for everyone. It's not clear to me what policies you think are drifting from that. What I think people continue to miss is that by and large the Registry is far, far less involved in the life of any particular domain than the Registrar. Their policy choices, pressure points, and regulatory requirements are substantially more impactful than those of the Registry.
brandur 6y ago
Another great win for the EFF. We shouldn't forget how much time and effort fighting this kind of thing takes, and we are very lucky to have an organization who's willing to put in the legwork from which all of us are huge beneficiaries. (Edit: just donated.) I guess it was implied by the article, but wasn't perfectly clear to me: does this mean that .org just stays with its current holders, ISOC? (Internet Society) As much as ICANN and Ethos Capital acted maliciously in this whole debacle, it's very possible that the most malicious actor of all was ISOC. In 2002 they were granted the management of a public good (the .org registry), with the idea that they'd administrate it responsibly and fairly. In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. However, it's obvious with this attempted sales that ISOC never considered themselves to be a higher-minded steward doing anything for the greater good. To them, .org was an asset to be pumped and dumped at the first, best offer that came along. They were well aware that Ethos had plans to turn .org into a major profit center with a captive audience of all existing .org holders, to the detriment of tens of thousands of non-profits (and many others) worldwide, and enthusiastically agreed to the plan anyway. It was money in their pocket, and the money was good. What would it take for the ICANN to claw back the .org registry and grant it to a more ethical caretaker? (CCOR for example [1].) It seems to me that "easy come, easy go" is a perfect ethos for this situation, and the ISOC shouldn't be allowed to take another dime from .org. --- [1] https://www.ccor.org/ https://www.ccor.org/
- yzmtf2008 6y ago
  > In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. Clearly, there’s more to managing a domain than a “license to print money”. Otherwise, who would want to sell it?
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Someone looking for a quick buck?
    - Retric 6y ago
deadanon 6y ago
I'm just here to see what account ICANN has to say
beambot 6y ago
You know who I would trust to administer the .org TLD for long-term public good... The EFF.
- julianlam 6y ago
  I could get behind this. I'd contribute to a crowdfund to support that as well (as a .org domain holder)
- tux 6y ago
  I would trust EFF to administer all TLDs :) Epic win EFF, good job!
- hetman 6y ago
  I definitely agree in the short term, but having profitable assets might attract the wrong kind of people to the organisation so I don't know how I feel about it in the long term.
  - jethro_tell 6y ago
    Surely this could be set up to redirect profits into the EFFs other work in a binding sort of way.
    - wahern 6y ago
      That's precisely how ICANN was set up, as a public benefit corporation with articles of incorporation that required it to promote "the global public interest in the operational stability of the Internet." But if you control the board, in the long term you can accomplish pretty much whatever you want. Relying on regulators to give such an organization sufficient attention isn't a good strategy; their attention is spread thin across thousands of organizations, and of course they lack domain knowledge. Though, you can leverage the threat of regulators to impede the board, much like the EFF did as a vigilant third party. Ultimately what needs to happen is for ICANN board members to be replaced with better people; perhaps people nominated by the EFF and similar organizations. Hopefully that will happen. Moving responsibilities to the EFF just shuffles labels around. The same thing that happened to ICANN could happen to EFF, it just hasn't happened yet because EFF isn't holding billions in assets.
Ericson2314 6y ago
I'm a big fan of the EFF, but all this flexing over...getting back to the status quo sure as hell reminds me of https://incite-national.org/beyond-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/ https://incite-national.org/beyond-the-non-profit-industrial.... Every growing NGOs in a perfect stalemate of ever increasing outrage and budgets is a lot like Oceania and Eastasia in perpetual war so the increasing productivity doesn't lead to leisure time.
- senux 6y ago
  If it were a for-profit, private company which was "flexing" I'd agree with you. But EFF works hard to defend our rights and internet freedom. If they bolster their wins with some overly excited language, I believe they are well within their right. Also, it serves as a good way to promote their work and incentivise people to contribute. I fail to see an issue with their approach here but would like to hear a counter argument if there is one.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    I don't there is a specific issue here, and yeah I like the EFF too. But imagine if were, I duno, someone from the Red Cross, Greenpeace, or something writing this.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Not sure why you are tone policing the EFF and implying they are a part of some kind of NGO conspiracy if you are “a big fan”.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
For anyone who shops at Amazon, you can use Amazon Smile to automatically donate a percent of your purchases to EFF: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_saas https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_s...
- codys 6y ago
  I do this, but I also worry that a result of "Amazon Smile" will be that charitable organizations will be less willing to be critical of Amazon due to donations to them being provided by Amazon.
  - stkdump 6y ago
    Right. Also buy somewhere, anywhere else whenever possible. You can still donate separately.
dannyobrien 6y ago
EFF is currently in the middle of its year-end fundraising challenge. If you donate now at: https://eff.org/donate/ https://eff.org/donate/ you'll be helping unlock a series of matching grants. Plus, this year, a US tax rule change means that you can deduct up to $300, even if you don't itemize. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/special-300-tax-deduction-helps-most-people-give-to-charity-this-year-even-if-they-dont-itemize https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/special-300-tax-deduction-helps...
- r00fus 6y ago
  I did this and had my workplace match the donation.
EricE 6y ago
ICANN being an utter debacle? If only we could have seen this coming. /s
karmahunting 6y ago
EFF should "let's encrypt" TLDs... They could buy one or several TLDs and provide it for a reasonable price and not increase the price unless it's really necessary for the operation of the TLD.... I'll leave the details to the experts...
- this_was_posted 6y ago
  I'd predict this would lead to rampant domain squatting on such a free TLD, which would render the TLD useless
  - minot 6y ago
    What if it was like a dollar a year with “premium” domains and domains shorter than say five or six characters cost some obscene amount like a thousand dollars a year?
TwoBit 6y ago
No good can possibly come from the sale of something in the public interest to a private equity firm. Surely ICANN knew this, and the attempt to go through with it indicates corruption within ICANN.
jacquesm 6y ago
As a rule of thumb: If some party or law has 'freedom', 'ethics', 'public', 'peoples' or such words in their name in one form or another then you're being had.
AHappyCamper 6y ago
Will I get censored for upvoting this story? ;)
e2le 6y ago
I would love to support them and buy from their shop but $25 shipping is a bit much. I guess it'll just be a regular donation.
bpbh 6y ago
Impressive. Only true domain lovers will concern about the future of the .org TLD. I just made a site for these domain lovers. https://www.sideplanet.com https://www.sideplanet.com
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Am I the only one thinking that "organization" is a super-vague term ? IMHO non-profits should (instead / in addition) register the .ngo/.ong domain...
- arendtio 6y ago
  So you mean 'Non Government' == 'Non Profit'? I know that the term NGO is used for Non Profits, but strictly speaking I think that comes more from the term 'Organization' (as opposed to company) than from the term 'Non Government'.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    You need both to be an NGO/ONG : > A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a non-for-profit, voluntary citizens’ group, which is organized on a local, national or international level to address issues in support of the public good. https://www.apa.org/international/united-nations/acronyms.pdf https://www.apa.org/international/united-nations/acronyms.pd...
29athrowaway 6y ago
Ethos Capital is a sock puppet entity created in 2019 with the sole purpose of concealing the identity of investors we do not know much about. The EFF had significant restraint when it comes to talk about Ethos Capital itself.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Hmm, there's still the issue that both ISOC and ICANN are located in the USA, and – unless they have been granted super-special status by the UN – are subject to USA laws. As long that is the case, we have an "USAnet", rather than a real Internet. I can see two ways to deal with this issue : 1.) A UN-funded organization located on "UN soil", ideally far away from the biggest powers (but then close enough to Internet nodes) – maybe Geneva, Switzerland ? 2.) A decentralized system. Freenet / Tor / Blockchain aficionados can have their field day. In both these cases, the only thing that the organization could do is to keep just enough friction to keep domain scalpers at bay. No censorship whatsoever allowed, if a country wants to block a domain name, they will have to do it on their side. Yes, this means that there will be pedo / nazi / terrorist / copyright infringement ( / &c.) domains, but you can't have both your freedom of speech cake and eat the censorship too : this is more important than Facebook comments / YouTube videos! (Hmm, I wonder why isis.org redirects (for me?) to species360.org ?) Oh, also maybe this organization could keep a database of worldwide judicial decisions about the blocking of domain names. Also there needs to be enough friction on domain name changes for the judiciary systems to be able to keep up. Oh, and it would also be responsible for verifying that the .ngo/.ong domains really belong to non-profit, non-governmental organizations.
- estaseuropano 6y ago
  While I agree with your premise of a neutral organisation free speech doesn't work. It never has and never will. The internet has proven that a lawless space should not be tolerated. Nazis, Islamism, rape porn, child abuse, slave sales, hitmen, ... You don't want the mob to rule the web. The question would then be if nations can find some common ground of what is unacceptable (so e.g. insulting the king of Thailand shouldn't get your site deleted) or there needs to be another system to enable global takedowns.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Sorry, maybe I should have said "The (regular) Web" since that's what we are talking about. AFAIK a lot of these not-web/"dark web"(?)–sites are available on the Internet via tools like Freenet (and Tor?) > The question would then be if nations can find some common ground of what is unacceptable This is just not going to happen. There are 195 countries in the world. They can't even agree on whether women have the same rights as men or whether it is legal to draw images of the Muslim prophet (So, depending on what you mean by the term, "Islamism" might just be the legal system of some countries, as 35 of them apply more or less the Sharia). Or another example : the USA is supposed to be a single country, yet in some of its states sex between full blown adults and teenagers of a certain age is legal, while in others a teenager becomes a sex offender by merely owning photos of him/herself naked ! (And how would you deal with potential new countries that might not agree to the previous 'common ground' ?)
crististm 6y ago
And when you think about it, having a different DNS root would bring into existence an entirely new internet universe. I don't remember the name of the server but there was at least one that I knew of which mirrored the current DNS but allowed for the idea of enabling an Internet 2.
Andrex 6y ago
I honestly didn't think we'd win. I'm still a little speechless we did. EFF is one of only a few organizations I've ever donated money to, and clearly they deserve so again. This entire saga has made me a dyed-in-the-wool EFF fanboy (and I was always a fan.)
Proven 6y ago
Why doesn't the EFF run their own TLD (or endorse a not-for-profit TLD) to show the world how it's done, rather than waste their efforts on this PR-centric crap?
troquerre 6y ago
ICANN has proven itself incapable of governing the root DNS namespace. As much as crypto gets a bad rap here I think it’d be better if authority over TLDs was decentralized such that anyone could own one. Handshake.org is one project trying to do this and interestingly there are additional benefits to decentralizing the root DNS such as getting rid of CAs as the root of trust for security.
jsmo 6y ago
Thank you EFF!
telesilla 6y ago
Please donate. If you are a business, likely you get other businesses offering you end of year gifts. Decline and ask for a donation to the EFF. Our future to to do business online depends on their ability to fight these things for us.

1187 points by thomasahle 6y ago

eps 6y ago

No formal investigation into the ICANN corruption that led to this situation in the first place?

lvs 6y ago
There's no way this is a durable win without some thorough investigation, post mortem about how this nearly happened, and corrective actions.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Cali AG was looking into it.
- wahern 6y ago
  According to the AG's April 15, 2020 letter, an investigation was already completed. > To that end, my office conducted an investigation of ICANN and its role in approving the transfer of the .ORG Registry Agreement from the Public Interest Registry ("PIR") (the supporting organization to the Internet Society ("ISOC")) to Ethos Capital https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AG%20Becerra%20Letter%20to%20ICANN.pdf https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AG%20... That letter ends with a warning that the AG would "continue to evaluate" the matter. Considering the ICANN board rejected the sale April 30[1], two weeks after the letter, I suspect the AG's office is no longer looking into the matter. Because the sale was never completed, and everything else seems to be business as usual, I don't think there's anything for the AG to continue looking into. The AG's job is to make sure charitable trusts adhere to their purpose, not to police potential impropriety that doesn't materially effect the trust. (They basically play the role of a shareholder, who in regular corporations can sue if the corporation doesn't adhere to the articles of incorporation; or the role of a beneficiary in a regular trust, who can sue if the trustee misappropriates the assets.) I'm also not sure if there's any criminal exposure here. Usually self-dealing is a civil matter, even for charitable trusts, unless it involves some other criminal act--e.g. fraud, but in this case nobody really thinks the board was being duped by the former ICANN CEO. If there was potential criminality then probably the AG wasn't confident it could make a case beyond a reasonable doubt without an actual sale and evidence about how .org would have been administered in fact. [1] https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2020-04-30-en https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2.... Announcement at https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-of-control-of-the-public-interest-registry-pir https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consen...
sprash 6y ago
The only correct answer is to switch to decentralized solutions like namecoin. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Any "formal investigation" will be a temporary fix at best. ICANN can do what it wants and it always will.
- troquerre 6y ago
  Have you checked out Handshake? It’s a decentralized DNS experiment that launched this year and already has adoption from domain registrars like 101domain.com and Encirca
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    "Handshake uses proof-of-work mining, as it is currently the most reliable way to do compact light client proofs. Proof of work uses computational power, a lot of it." No thanks.

wolco2 6y ago

The fees on .org are expensive compared to the other top level domains com/net I recently switched from org to the countrycode version for a domain that was available and saved half of the cost.

reidjs 6y ago
So $1 per month instead of $2?
- nso 6y ago
  Not everyone counts their holdings in USD. That price difference may be what sets a launched and abandoned project apart. One of my neighbors is 17 and interested in coding and computers. I'd say their family MAYBE brings in 250 USD a month -- but probably less. A dollar can be a lot.
  - rodone 6y ago
    Yeah, let's get private equity involved, that'll make it cheaper for sure.
    - Tostino 6y ago
      What is this in reference to?
      - edoceo 6y ago
        The .org deal this whole thread is about. PE tried to get their dirty hands on this TLD
      - abeyer 6y ago
        The linked article, perhaps?
  - Kwpolska 6y ago
    Does your neighbor really need a domain, and does it have to be a .org? You can do web stuff with free or ultra-cheap domains. And most hosting services will cost much more than the $0.67 or $0.85 you pay per month for a .com or .org respectively (at CloudFlare Domains).

breck 6y ago

Ah yes, bravo EFF, you've won another battle barely keeping us at the status quo. When are you going to stop playing whack-a-mole trying to defend against every assault on internet freedoms and go on the offensive and try to win the game for the good guys? We now have the ability to give the poorest child on earth access to the same information as the richest, and yet we allow industry to shackle us instead. It's time to demand intellectual freedom. #AbolishCopyright. #AbolishPatents. #AbolishImaginaryPropertyLaws

ineedasername 6y ago
If the EFF has to play whack-a-mole it's because there is no one single problem or threat vector to internet freedoms. Going on the offensive would require just as much whack-a-mole, fighting battles on many fronts, because there is no single issue they could fight for & win that would resolve the entire picture. And in the case of the .ORG issue, what would going on the offensive even have looked like? How would the EFF have fought off an attempt by a private equity firm to obtain & abuse stewardship over the TLD?
- breck 6y ago
  > there is no one single problem or threat vector to internet freedoms There is one and only one problem: #ImaginaryPropertyLaws. What do all of the companies and organizations the EFF is constantly battling have in common? They all derive their power from #ImaginaryPropertyLaws and would all be disrupted without them.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    How is a domain imaginary property? Only one person can use it. Whether you call it property or something else, the end result is the same. How is internet censorship related to property? No more so than speech out in the real world is related to property rights. I'm not saying you're even wrong: You've simply made an extremely vague claim without explanation of what you mean or, in response to my comment, what single battle could be fought to resolve the issue. Your comment lacks the necessary criteria to even evaluate it.

noizejoy 6y ago

Seems like a nice victory in a single battle. But in the context of a much larger war in the TLD space it doesn’t seem like domain registrants are winning: https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/19/donuts-is-acquiring-afilias/ https://domainnamewire.com/2020/11/19/donuts-is-acquiring-af... EDIT to add: http://domainincite.com/26107-westerdal-offloads-two-more-gtlds-to-donuts http://domainincite.com/26107-westerdal-offloads-two-more-gt...

mr_toad 6y ago
Maybe the best outcome will be that Donuts gobbles up everything, gets sued for being an illegal monopoly, broken up, and then the whole sordid registry system can be replaced.
- noizejoy 6y ago
  Now you have me curious - what kind of better replacement do you have in mind?
  - wegs 6y ago
    Rules: 1) First-come-first-serve for your first handful of domains. Price is nominal (e.g. $1/year). 2) Increasing price with number of domains held. If I hold myname.com, it's $1. If I hold a thousand domain, the last 500 are at $1000/year. 3) Oversight for transfers. If sold, resale value is capped. Historic domains shouldn't be used for spam but perhaps go to archive.org or similar entities. 4) Managed by a government institution or not-for-profit with open meetings, salary caps, public records requests, and other (legally-enforceable) checks-and-balances. 5) Several TLDs, but you can't register in all of them. You can have mybusiness.com or mybusiness.mobi, but not all of the above. If I have the same business name as you (Apple records v. Apple computer), I go to a different TLD. 6) Rules for new TLDs. You can't pull the Coursera.org "We're a not-for-profit" shtick. Old domains grandfathered in. 7) Oversight/governing board with members from the EFF, FSF, OSF, and so on.
    - zrm 6y ago

longtailofsighs 6y ago

I love a lot of what the EFF does, but this campaign, and many other organizations involved in it got a lot wrong. The real issue, that in fairness the EFF leads with, was the change in the .org contract, not the sale itself. The most robust overview of the whole thing that I have read can be found here: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/05/01/no-real-winners-in-dot-org-decision/ https://www.internetgovernance.org/2020/05/01/no-real-winner... Whether people like it or not the operation of the DNS, including .org, is a commercial endeavor. It doesn't make sense to focus only on .org, when a) Registrars not Registries are the real place to try and protect Registrants. b) Org has always been open to anyone, and their are likely as many, if not more civil society organizations in com, net, and other tlds.

techsupporter 6y ago
> Whether people like it or not the operation of the DNS, including .org, is a commercial endeavor. It's about disparate impact, as is the case in many things that have extensive histories around them. That .org was allowed to drift from its original mission of being the "catch-all / noncommercial" zone of the DNS doesn't mean we shouldn't work to nudge it back to that original ideal. At a minimum, allowing what is arguably a public good (DNS is a limited space, though less limited than phone numbers or RF allocations) to be transferred and barricaded is not good.
- longtailofsighs 6y ago
  I don't disagree that the DNS is a public good. And fascinatingly unique in that it's global public good, reasonably successfully managed without government intervention. If the barricading is in reference to price increases, then again it's not the acquisition that enabled this, it was the contract change with ICANN. Registries transfer ownership all the time. .Biz was acquired by GoDaddy this year, and Afilias who run .info as well as the technical backend for .org was acquired by Donuts. No one made a fuss about these, which is another reason why the .org upset feels arbitrary. Is there something inherently bad with those acquisitions? I'm not sure I understand the drifting comment. .Org continues to position itself as a place for everyone. It's not clear to me what policies you think are drifting from that. What I think people continue to miss is that by and large the Registry is far, far less involved in the life of any particular domain than the Registrar. Their policy choices, pressure points, and regulatory requirements are substantially more impactful than those of the Registry.

brandur 6y ago

Another great win for the EFF. We shouldn't forget how much time and effort fighting this kind of thing takes, and we are very lucky to have an organization who's willing to put in the legwork from which all of us are huge beneficiaries. (Edit: just donated.) I guess it was implied by the article, but wasn't perfectly clear to me: does this mean that .org just stays with its current holders, ISOC? (Internet Society) As much as ICANN and Ethos Capital acted maliciously in this whole debacle, it's very possible that the most malicious actor of all was ISOC. In 2002 they were granted the management of a public good (the .org registry), with the idea that they'd administrate it responsibly and fairly. In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. However, it's obvious with this attempted sales that ISOC never considered themselves to be a higher-minded steward doing anything for the greater good. To them, .org was an asset to be pumped and dumped at the first, best offer that came along. They were well aware that Ethos had plans to turn .org into a major profit center with a captive audience of all existing .org holders, to the detriment of tens of thousands of non-profits (and many others) worldwide, and enthusiastically agreed to the plan anyway. It was money in their pocket, and the money was good. What would it take for the ICANN to claw back the .org registry and grant it to a more ethical caretaker? (CCOR for example [1].) It seems to me that "easy come, easy go" is a perfect ethos for this situation, and the ISOC shouldn't be allowed to take another dime from .org. --- [1] https://www.ccor.org/ https://www.ccor.org/

yzmtf2008 6y ago
> In return, they were well compensated as they managed .org registrations over all these years, which is more or less a license to print money. Clearly, there’s more to managing a domain than a “license to print money”. Otherwise, who would want to sell it?
- jandrese 6y ago
  Someone looking for a quick buck?
  - Retric 6y ago

deadanon 6y ago

I'm just here to see what account ICANN has to say

beambot 6y ago

You know who I would trust to administer the .org TLD for long-term public good... The EFF.

julianlam 6y ago
I could get behind this. I'd contribute to a crowdfund to support that as well (as a .org domain holder)
tux 6y ago
I would trust EFF to administer all TLDs :) Epic win EFF, good job!
hetman 6y ago
I definitely agree in the short term, but having profitable assets might attract the wrong kind of people to the organisation so I don't know how I feel about it in the long term.
- jethro_tell 6y ago
  Surely this could be set up to redirect profits into the EFFs other work in a binding sort of way.
  - wahern 6y ago
    That's precisely how ICANN was set up, as a public benefit corporation with articles of incorporation that required it to promote "the global public interest in the operational stability of the Internet." But if you control the board, in the long term you can accomplish pretty much whatever you want. Relying on regulators to give such an organization sufficient attention isn't a good strategy; their attention is spread thin across thousands of organizations, and of course they lack domain knowledge. Though, you can leverage the threat of regulators to impede the board, much like the EFF did as a vigilant third party. Ultimately what needs to happen is for ICANN board members to be replaced with better people; perhaps people nominated by the EFF and similar organizations. Hopefully that will happen. Moving responsibilities to the EFF just shuffles labels around. The same thing that happened to ICANN could happen to EFF, it just hasn't happened yet because EFF isn't holding billions in assets.

Ericson2314 6y ago

I'm a big fan of the EFF, but all this flexing over...getting back to the status quo sure as hell reminds me of https://incite-national.org/beyond-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/ https://incite-national.org/beyond-the-non-profit-industrial.... Every growing NGOs in a perfect stalemate of ever increasing outrage and budgets is a lot like Oceania and Eastasia in perpetual war so the increasing productivity doesn't lead to leisure time.

senux 6y ago
If it were a for-profit, private company which was "flexing" I'd agree with you. But EFF works hard to defend our rights and internet freedom. If they bolster their wins with some overly excited language, I believe they are well within their right. Also, it serves as a good way to promote their work and incentivise people to contribute. I fail to see an issue with their approach here but would like to hear a counter argument if there is one.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  I don't there is a specific issue here, and yeah I like the EFF too. But imagine if were, I duno, someone from the Red Cross, Greenpeace, or something writing this.
Ensorceled 6y ago
Not sure why you are tone policing the EFF and implying they are a part of some kind of NGO conspiracy if you are “a big fan”.

SkyMarshal 6y ago

For anyone who shops at Amazon, you can use Amazon Smile to automatically donate a percent of your purchases to EFF: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_saas https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_s...

codys 6y ago
I do this, but I also worry that a result of "Amazon Smile" will be that charitable organizations will be less willing to be critical of Amazon due to donations to them being provided by Amazon.
- stkdump 6y ago
  Right. Also buy somewhere, anywhere else whenever possible. You can still donate separately.

dannyobrien 6y ago

EFF is currently in the middle of its year-end fundraising challenge. If you donate now at: https://eff.org/donate/ https://eff.org/donate/ you'll be helping unlock a series of matching grants. Plus, this year, a US tax rule change means that you can deduct up to $300, even if you don't itemize. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/special-300-tax-deduction-helps-most-people-give-to-charity-this-year-even-if-they-dont-itemize https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/special-300-tax-deduction-helps...

r00fus 6y ago
I did this and had my workplace match the donation.

EricE 6y ago

ICANN being an utter debacle? If only we could have seen this coming. /s

karmahunting 6y ago

EFF should "let's encrypt" TLDs... They could buy one or several TLDs and provide it for a reasonable price and not increase the price unless it's really necessary for the operation of the TLD.... I'll leave the details to the experts...

this_was_posted 6y ago
I'd predict this would lead to rampant domain squatting on such a free TLD, which would render the TLD useless
- minot 6y ago
  What if it was like a dollar a year with “premium” domains and domains shorter than say five or six characters cost some obscene amount like a thousand dollars a year?

TwoBit 6y ago

No good can possibly come from the sale of something in the public interest to a private equity firm. Surely ICANN knew this, and the attempt to go through with it indicates corruption within ICANN.

jacquesm 6y ago

As a rule of thumb: If some party or law has 'freedom', 'ethics', 'public', 'peoples' or such words in their name in one form or another then you're being had.

AHappyCamper 6y ago

Will I get censored for upvoting this story? ;)

e2le 6y ago

I would love to support them and buy from their shop but $25 shipping is a bit much. I guess it'll just be a regular donation.

bpbh 6y ago

Impressive. Only true domain lovers will concern about the future of the .org TLD. I just made a site for these domain lovers. https://www.sideplanet.com https://www.sideplanet.com

BlueTemplar 6y ago

Am I the only one thinking that "organization" is a super-vague term ? IMHO non-profits should (instead / in addition) register the .ngo/.ong domain...

arendtio 6y ago
So you mean 'Non Government' == 'Non Profit'? I know that the term NGO is used for Non Profits, but strictly speaking I think that comes more from the term 'Organization' (as opposed to company) than from the term 'Non Government'.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  You need both to be an NGO/ONG : > A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a non-for-profit, voluntary citizens’ group, which is organized on a local, national or international level to address issues in support of the public good. https://www.apa.org/international/united-nations/acronyms.pdf https://www.apa.org/international/united-nations/acronyms.pd...

29athrowaway 6y ago

Ethos Capital is a sock puppet entity created in 2019 with the sole purpose of concealing the identity of investors we do not know much about. The EFF had significant restraint when it comes to talk about Ethos Capital itself.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

Hmm, there's still the issue that both ISOC and ICANN are located in the USA, and – unless they have been granted super-special status by the UN – are subject to USA laws. As long that is the case, we have an "USAnet", rather than a real Internet. I can see two ways to deal with this issue : 1.) A UN-funded organization located on "UN soil", ideally far away from the biggest powers (but then close enough to Internet nodes) – maybe Geneva, Switzerland ? 2.) A decentralized system. Freenet / Tor / Blockchain aficionados can have their field day. In both these cases, the only thing that the organization could do is to keep just enough friction to keep domain scalpers at bay. No censorship whatsoever allowed, if a country wants to block a domain name, they will have to do it on their side. Yes, this means that there will be pedo / nazi / terrorist / copyright infringement ( / &c.) domains, but you can't have both your freedom of speech cake and eat the censorship too : this is more important than Facebook comments / YouTube videos! (Hmm, I wonder why isis.org redirects (for me?) to species360.org ?) Oh, also maybe this organization could keep a database of worldwide judicial decisions about the blocking of domain names. Also there needs to be enough friction on domain name changes for the judiciary systems to be able to keep up. Oh, and it would also be responsible for verifying that the .ngo/.ong domains really belong to non-profit, non-governmental organizations.

estaseuropano 6y ago
While I agree with your premise of a neutral organisation free speech doesn't work. It never has and never will. The internet has proven that a lawless space should not be tolerated. Nazis, Islamism, rape porn, child abuse, slave sales, hitmen, ... You don't want the mob to rule the web. The question would then be if nations can find some common ground of what is unacceptable (so e.g. insulting the king of Thailand shouldn't get your site deleted) or there needs to be another system to enable global takedowns.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Sorry, maybe I should have said "The (regular) Web" since that's what we are talking about. AFAIK a lot of these not-web/"dark web"(?)–sites are available on the Internet via tools like Freenet (and Tor?) > The question would then be if nations can find some common ground of what is unacceptable This is just not going to happen. There are 195 countries in the world. They can't even agree on whether women have the same rights as men or whether it is legal to draw images of the Muslim prophet (So, depending on what you mean by the term, "Islamism" might just be the legal system of some countries, as 35 of them apply more or less the Sharia). Or another example : the USA is supposed to be a single country, yet in some of its states sex between full blown adults and teenagers of a certain age is legal, while in others a teenager becomes a sex offender by merely owning photos of him/herself naked ! (And how would you deal with potential new countries that might not agree to the previous 'common ground' ?)

crististm 6y ago

And when you think about it, having a different DNS root would bring into existence an entirely new internet universe. I don't remember the name of the server but there was at least one that I knew of which mirrored the current DNS but allowed for the idea of enabling an Internet 2.

Andrex 6y ago

I honestly didn't think we'd win. I'm still a little speechless we did. EFF is one of only a few organizations I've ever donated money to, and clearly they deserve so again. This entire saga has made me a dyed-in-the-wool EFF fanboy (and I was always a fan.)

Proven 6y ago

Why doesn't the EFF run their own TLD (or endorse a not-for-profit TLD) to show the world how it's done, rather than waste their efforts on this PR-centric crap?

troquerre 6y ago

ICANN has proven itself incapable of governing the root DNS namespace. As much as crypto gets a bad rap here I think it’d be better if authority over TLDs was decentralized such that anyone could own one. Handshake.org is one project trying to do this and interestingly there are additional benefits to decentralizing the root DNS such as getting rid of CAs as the root of trust for security.

jsmo 6y ago

Thank you EFF!

telesilla 6y ago

Please donate. If you are a business, likely you get other businesses offering you end of year gifts. Decline and ask for a donation to the EFF. Our future to to do business online depends on their ability to fight these things for us.