
ICANN delays .org selloff after California’s attorney general intervenes - sohkamyung
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/17/icann_california_org_sale_delay/
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surge
I can't see any way selling .org from a non-profit to a commercial entity who
is profit motivated makes sense at all.

In online debates a decade or more ago, I remember people, including myself,
used to defend American control of the domain system by pointing out the
altruistic and independent nature of the ICANN and their history of being good
stewards of the DNS infrastructure thus far. That seems to no longer be the
case. This whole deal calls into serious question their current integrity.

~~~
willvarfar
There are precedents. I stopped buying National Geographic magazine when the
Society sold it to Fox.

From [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-
geog...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-geographic-
magazine-shifts-to-for-profit-status-with-fox-
partnership/2015/09/09/7c9f034e-56f0-11e5-8bb1-b488d231bba2_story.html)

> On Wednesday, the iconic ­yellow-bordered magazine, beset by financial
> issues, entered its own uncharted territory. In an effort to stave off
> further decline, the magazine was effectively sold by its nonprofit parent
> organization to a for-profit venture whose principal shareholder is one of
> Rupert Murdoch’s global media companies.

~~~
realityking
Looks like that stake went to Disney when most of Fox was sold to them.
Interesting.

~~~
kozhevnikov
It's on all Disney+ ads.

[https://i.imgur.com/avn5ck8.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/avn5ck8.jpg)

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DeathArrow
Am I the only one who believes .tld model is broken? ICANN and IANA overseeing
all .tld creation, the current pollution with thousands of .ltds, being just
two problems.

Maybe even the .tld model is too old to help identify hosts. In the beginning
of Internet com, edu, gov, mil, org were enough to group hosts. But now, that
we have zillions of hosts, .tld might not be enough.

If IPv6 is a response to IPv4 limits, maybe we need something better than
.tld, too.

~~~
markovbot
What are your concerns about TLD "pollution"?

opening up TLDs for sale seems like a (somewhat) logical way to expand the
available namespace for domains. We have zillions of hosts, why require them
to conform to one of a few random categories.

Certainly, I have issues with how TLDs are allocated and controlled, but that
doesn't mean that the general idea of allowing essentially arbitrary top level
domains the same the way we do with second level domains is inherently a bad
thing.

~~~
dmm
They tlds are basically scams. When they are introduced they claim to have a
rollout schedule that allows the general public to register names but the good
names are effectively reserved.

I tried to buy california.beer on the first day .beer was available to the
public. It was always listed as unregistered but if I tried to buy it strange
errors occurred.

After the time period where they were required to allow registrations for a
set price, california.beer was listed for $1000+.

------
DeathArrow
Can't we come up with a simple, good technical solution to identify hosts?

Something that is scalable, is easy to use from a technical perspective and
also easy to use by humans?

The biggest thing to solve is that meaningful dictionary words are few and
many people fight over them. But the current solution to that means thousands
upon thousands of tlds, which nobody cares of, are hard to remember. Most
people still fight over .com domains and prices got to insane levels.

To have the chance to use a decent .com name for your business, you have to
first buy another tld, work for a few years, pile up some millions of USD and
get it from the domain hoarders.

Having a .com domain with a name relevant to your business is still perceived
as a big advantage.

~~~
organsnyder
> Something that is scalable, is easy to use from a technical perspective and
> also easy to use by humans?

That's exactly what we have right now.

This is a business/culture/government/economics problem—not a technical one.
As long as the end goal of the system is "type in a string of text on any
computer connected to the internet, and get the same result[1]", we're going
to have issues like this.

When I got my first domain name, the cost was $100 for two years (and $50/year
thereafter). At that price, no one thought of squatting on any but the most
lucrative domain names—certainly not mass-registering thousands of domains and
holding on to them for years. I don't want to go back to those prices, but
those are the sorts of parameters that impact the domain name market.

[1] Yes, there non-public zones, geo-routing, etc. But as long as we define
"result" as "exactly what the organization controlling that substring wants
you to get" I think it works.

~~~
finnthehuman
>I don't want to go back to those prices, but those are the sorts of
parameters that impact the domain name market.

The amount of money businesses are willing to spend on branding is large
enough that there is no price point that would allow me to both afford
renewals on my email server's domain, but doesn't also enable squatting.

~~~
labawi
The mere existence of squatting is not as much an issue, as the scale when
most domains are speculators and it's hard to get a reasonable name.

Also, some TLDs have prior rights and domain dispute processes for
speculators. Namespaces can be handled much better than current .com
situation.

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uasm
The "Chief Purpose Officer" at Ethos is working hard these days to keep us all
well informed - [http://www.circleid.com/pp/dot-org-
sale](http://www.circleid.com/pp/dot-org-sale)

~~~
_0ffh
I wonder if the name is a reflection of the PR strategy to claim special merit
on exactly the point where you're actually most lacking.

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zelon88
Is this deal something the SEC can throw the book at? I mean it's quite
obvious that this is an inside deal with front companies to gut a public non-
profit just less than 4 years after ICANN stopped being supervised by the
Department of Commerce.

How is this legal and why isn't it being criminally investigated?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Corruption, in USA? That's entirely legal for rich people and endorsed by
congress I thought. smh

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nikanj
Delays, not cancels. Alas, the attackers have a lot to gain, so they'll keep
mounting the attacks. And the defenders have very little -personal- reason to
fight back.

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rattray
The letter from the AG is here:
[https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/becerra...](https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/becerra-
to-botterman-marby-15apr20-en.pdf)

It opens with this:

My office has “responsibility for supervising charitable trusts in California,
for ensuring compliance with trusts and articles of incorporation, and for
protection of assets held by charitable trusts and public benefit
corporations…” (Gov. Code, § 12598.) My office is tasked with the authority to
“investigate transactions and relationships of corporations and trustees…for
the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the purposes of the corporation or
trust are being carried out in accordance with the terms and provisions of the
articles of incorporation or other instrument.” (Gov. Code, § 12588). 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...

and yes, ICANN is based in California, so it seems they could possibly have
their charter revoked if they sell and the AG comes after them (IANAL).

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type0
Now it's time to change the name to Pathos Capital

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blablabla123
That's really stupid, maybe this will push alternatives like namecoin...

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knolax
Wild how organizations like ICANN that are supposedly international are in
practice wholely within the jurisdiction of some regional government. Not even
the Federal government, they're being stopped by the state of California!

~~~
DeathArrow
I wonder why organizations like ICANN that are supposedly international are
hurrying to sell .org tld to some private firm with very opaque ownership. And
why that process of selling isn't transparent, why they didn't do any bidding
before of selling?

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misrab
We need the Ethereum Naming System (ENS) as soon as possible.

Domain names will be one of the first major applications of global consensus
algorithms.

[https://ens.domains/](https://ens.domains/)

~~~
josefx
You are aware that your link itself spells out that they aren't finished and
still use a root cert with seven owners? There are likely more people involved
in the decision making process at ICANN. But, yeah, lets migrate our critical
infrastructure to some in progress project "as soon as possible". I mean it
has electrolytes^W block-chain in it, that is what plants^W security experts
crave, right?

