[HN Gopher] The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org
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The Attempted Corporate Takeover of .Org
Author : jdkee
Score : 108 points
Date : 2020-01-22 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prospect.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (prospect.org)
| teruakohatu wrote:
| It seems that over time any sufficiently well funded non-profit
| will eventually hire a financial engineer as CEO and transform
| into a Hedge Fund with some sort of charitable appendage.
| riddlemethat wrote:
| Absolutely true.
|
| My buddy managed money for the kind of non-profits everyone has
| heard of at one time or another.
|
| Tends to be that once they get big enough they find themselves
| recipients of endowments that they can invest however they see
| fit. They tend to put that capital to work in whatever yields
| the highest return.
|
| Know what offers the best returns? Stuff that tends to cause
| the problems the non-profit might have been set up to stop.
|
| Becomes a self sustaining ecosystem where the investments from
| the societally damaging corporations pays to sustain the
| cleanup effort.
| JohnFen wrote:
| PIR (and, apparently, ICANN) are simply selling us out on this,
| and whether or not the sale goes through, they both have taken a
| huge credibility hit -- and ICANN, anyway, already had
| credibility problems to begin with.
|
| In terms of its impact on the net, I see no upside to this at
| all. It's nothing but harmful.
| iameli wrote:
| > Verisign controls the registries for .com and .net, two of the
| internet's most popular. All it does is administer a database and
| collect small sums from website owners, but with computing power
| rising and practically no marginal cost to adding another website
| to the database, the entire enterprise is a license to print
| money. In the third quarter of 2019, Verisign showed operating
| income of $205.6 million on $308.4 million in revenues, a
| profitability margin of 66.67 percent. This makes Verisign one of
| the most profitable companies in the world.
|
| I wish we lived in a world where a company being kinda
| monopolistic to make a 67% profit margin was enough to get me
| angry. If I hadn't read this, I'd have assumed they were making a
| lot more than $100 million a year profit.
|
| I see the real answer to this as the gTLD program: radically
| expand the number of domain-issuing entities and normalize
| companies operating on something other than .com.
| coder1001 wrote:
| This quote kind of summarises the effect of the attempted
| takeover:
|
| "Nonprofit websites will be trapped: If they want to keep their
| longtime brand and their archives, they'll pay whatever price.
| "When you buy a domain you own it, but after a couple years it
| owns you.""
|
| Hope this ends well for all .org owners!
| kick wrote:
| I found this article incredible (despite the tabloid-like
| headline) on this subject:
|
| https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/14/icann_org_redacted/
|
| TL;DR: _Purchase funded by debt, includes another ex-ICANNer,
| will be done through four different companies._
|
| Some highlights that I think are important from it:
|
| _Incredibly, the names of three directors of the organization
| that will buy the registry remain redacted in documents published
| by ICANN [PDF] this month, despite the three entities pushing the
| sale - PIR, ISOC and Ethos Capital - claiming that publication of
| the information is "unprecedented" and they are "strong believers
| in the power of transparency."_
|
| _The rationale given for the removal of director names is that
| it was based "on the principles set forth in ICANN's Documentary
| Information Disclosure Policy (DIDP)" - a bizarre claim that has
| nothing to do with the issues at hand and which ICANN has refused
| to discuss._
|
| _As well as refusing to supply the names of those in overall
| charge, the three companies have also refused to publish the
| "underlying equity purchase agreement, sensitive financial
| information, corporate organizational information, draft
| organizational documents, documentation provided to governmental
| entities and certain supporting contractual documents."_
| kirbypineapple wrote:
| Attempted? It already happened.
| NickBusey wrote:
| According to the article, no it didn't.
|
| > ICANN must sign off on the deal in order for it to proceed.
| In December, it paused the sale for 30 days amid public outcry,
| expressing concern about the lack of transparency surrounding
| the deal.
| dang wrote:
| I think these are the major related threads so far. In reverse
| order:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21931258 - The NRO Issues
| Inspection Request to ICANN Concerning .ORG Sale
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21800085 - ICANN Delays .ORG
| Sale Approval
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21723682 - Why ISOC sold
| .ORG to VCs
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21689121 - The .Org Fire
| Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667355 - ISOC sold the
| .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656960 - Why I Voted to
| Sell .ORG
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21626677 - ICANN races
| towards regulatory capture: the great .org heist
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677 - Save .org
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297 - Internet world
| despairs as non-profit .org sold to private equity firm
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622 - Private Equity Is
| Going to Ruin the .Org Domain System and Screw Nonprofits
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779 - ICA asks ICANN to
| block .Org private equity deal in damning letter
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21526982 - Private Equity
| company acquires .org registry
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20263561 - Regulatory
| Capture at ICANN
|
| Have I missed any?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I don't really see the issue in this. Currently, anyone can buy a
| .org. Further, there is a massive proliferation in domain
| extensions. I almost feel like an extended profit motive might
| seek to charge $100 or more for .orgs in order to profit from
| some automated verification procedure. Maybe that would be good,
| if there is some authentication and prestige.
|
| Let's face it, ngos and non-profits have money. Paying $100 a
| year to maintain a verified "I'm not a company" status might be
| worth a lot more than that.
|
| I'm concerned by .gov extensions, as I'd blindly trust them. This
| seems like simple anti-capitalism as opposed to a principled
| argument for what the owner of .orgs should do.
| oaiey wrote:
| The UNHCR or another huge entity will not give a shit. They
| have a legal department which can end Ethos Capital if they
| like.
|
| However, the reading club with 20 members and yearly income of
| 300EUR cannot afford a 100EUR .org.
|
| .org and the NPR had a dedicated purpose.
| brandon272 wrote:
| Something has gone seriously wrong when one of our original TLDs,
| which, from my perspective, should be considered sacrosanct
| elements of the internet with historical importance, are able to
| be sold off by interloping individuals, who, for some bizarre
| reason, feel that they are entitled to capitalize on these TLDs,
| and who do so purely with their own self-interest at heart.
|
| I'm really just disappointed and angered that this happened.
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(page generated 2020-01-22 23:00 UTC)