
ICANN board withholds consent for a change of control of the .org registry - cjbprime
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-of-control-of-the-public-interest-registry-pir
======
kick
Your 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.

~~~
dchyrdvh
TBH, it's nothing to do with those lazy petitions. This happened because the
CA's AG chose to be a good guy, leveraged his power and put a lot of effort
into fighting the bad guys. I'm sure he's been offered fat kickbacks and
received thinly veiled treats. After this stunt he won't be offered a high
ranked corporate position to scheme shady things and won't be able to buy
yachts and helicopters left and right. That's basically the price he's paid. I
think attributing this win to some "voices" would be dishonest.

~~~
TheRealPomax
So he made a sacrifice because, what, he just woke up one morning and felt
like it? No. It's because the public brought it to his attention with enough
public support to _probably_ not hurt his career.

~~~
kbenson
Sometimes it's because they woke up and felt like it. You don't immediately
stop having having feelings about issues like you or me as soon as you're in
the AG office.

If that's just too wild to consider, it probably also looks good come next
election.

~~~
ardy42
> Sometimes it's because they woke up and felt like it. You don't immediately
> stop having having feelings about issues like you or me as soon as you're in
> the AG office.

Maybe, but probably not in this case.

The idea being put forward here is the AG's actions had "it's nothing to do
with those lazy petitions" and other kinds of activism. That's clearly false.
There are literally millions of good causes and issues, and _no one_ just
wakes up and decides to help one in particular. They need to learn information
about both the problem and the action, and that information needs to be
brought to their attention. For instance, it's almost certain there's
something like a charity that you'd certainly give money to, but you don't
because you're totally ignorant of it. It'll take a news article, a
conversation with a friend, etc. to bring it to your attention, first.

Petitions and activism are, among other things, ways of steering the attention
of those in power. I doubt the AG would have taken action independently unless
his attention has been so steered. Organizations like ICANN are not of
perennial law enforcement interest.

~~~
kbenson
> The idea being put forward here is the AG's actions had "it's nothing to do
> with those lazy petitions" and other kinds of activism. That's clearly
> false.

It's _likely_ false, because I'm sure it had _something_ to do with those
petitions even if a very small amount, but there are many other possible
reasons it could have become a priority to an AG. It's not either the
petitions or he did it out of the goodness of his heart.

But my point wasn't to imply he did it because he's a good guy, but to point
out he's a regular person with myriad motivations which likely _includes doing
what he thinks is the right thing_ in the calculation of what to do. There's
no reason to assume that just because someone holds public office they're
entirely self-serving. People are more complicated than that.

------
vxNsr
Everyone 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-11588...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/working-the-webs-
referees-11588200958)

~~~
wavesplash
WSJ leans whatever way News Corp wants post 2007 acquisition.

~~~
tankenmate
Also of note, NewsCorp sends lawyers and strategists to every ICANN meeting,
and has since at least 2010, if not before.

~~~
evolve2k
Really? that’s shocking. Do you have any sources you can share that confirm
this?

~~~
tankenmate
I 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.

------
noah_buddy
This 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
Not just that, we have to investigate why ICANN thought they could get away
with this. They will try again when convenient, otherwise.

~~~
Kiro
I don't know anything about this but what has ICANN to gain from this sale?

~~~
sjwright
Wrong question. The right question is what do the specific individuals at
ICANN have to gain?

~~~
C1sc0cat
$$$$$$$

~~~
sjwright
Quite.

------
sjwright
This 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.

~~~
champagneben
>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.

Is this necessarily the right move? I have a vague recollection of reading
about Singapore and their approach to attaining top talent to the public
sector with high wages. I could be totally wrong!

~~~
Ensorceled
There needs to be a difference between the stewardship roles and the
doer/self-interests roles. You can pay the doer, but the stewards are ideally
volunteers who care about the mission.

That this decision was made in the first place, and that ICANN took so long to
withhold consent, shows that there are not enough stewards in either
organization.

~~~
C1sc0cat
The problem was that oversight roles where hamstrung deliberately by the
executive (doers)

Holding meetings in far flung and hard to get to places was one tactic

~~~
Ensorceled
The actual problem is that the oversight roles didn’t immediately dismiss the
executive when they pulled these tricks.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Your not wrong you need a strong chair and a commitment to good governance - I
suspect there where a lot of buggins turn appointees with no experience in
holding an executive to account.

------
bosswipe
ICANN 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
> 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
[https://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.

~~~
rndgermandude
Every 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...](https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/12/the-sale-of-pir-the-
internet-society-board-perspective/)

~~~
drdec
> 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.

That would certainly work in the short term.

In the long term however, wouldn't the EFF become a magnet for the types of
people currently populating the ICANN board? They see that there is an
opportunity there. So I worry that the long term effect would be to ruin the
EFF as it is slowly overrun by opportunist that do not care about the core
mission.

Not sure what a good long term solution is however.

~~~
rndgermandude
It would become a magnet. However, given the broader membership base and their
history, I think it would be harder to take over something like the EFF or
e.g. the mozilla Foundation (and before you yell "browser maker, conflict of
interest" at me, I have a .dev domain to sell to you...).

The ISOC, while they proudly proclaim 67K members, is an organization with
largely silent/inactive members (aside from lobbyists), most of whom probably
forgot by now that they are members at all - or at least that's what it seems
to be from my perspective.

The EFF (or even mozilla) on the other hand have more active members, and it
would be harder to do a (slow-moving) hostile takeover. Of course, everything
can be undermined and taken over, as the ISOC shows. However, the ISOC seems
"burned" at this point where it would be extremely hard to rebuild and
recover, while the EFF e.g. is still functional and it would be easier to keep
it from deteriorating in the first place than trying to undo damage already
done.

~~~
jaywalk
>and before you yell "browser maker, conflict of interest" at me, I have a
.dev domain to sell to you...

I was about to start ranting about Google, but it appears that they are now
allowing public .dev registrations through registrars. I don't know when that
changed.

------
wl
The 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?

~~~
syshum
ISOC 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
We'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/)

------
cletus
What'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
If 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.

------
sneak
The 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
Central authorities are the worst form of governance, except for all the
others.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Actually 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._ )

~~~
geofft
So you're saying DNS registration should work more like how living in a
physical place works? Well, where I live,

\- My landlord and my city are both subject to laws from a national
government, and if they're egregiously misbehaving, the national government
can step in, but they usually don't.

\- If I switch landlords, let alone cities, my address changes.

\- I can choose a landlord and to a lesser extent a city by reputation, but I
might end up choosing a city because it's where I want to be for business etc.
reasons, even if I disagree with its leadership choices

\- I have limited ability to influence my city's decision-making and
essentially no ability to influence my nation's decision-making, but it's not
unheard of.

Which all seems very similar to having a choice of registrar, limited choice
of TLD/registry, no choice in ICANN, the theoretical (and occasionally
practical, as in this case) ability to influence ICANN, and the ability to
change registrars and TLDs if I like - as long as I'm okay changing addresses.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> my landlord and my city are both subject to laws from a national government,
> and if they're egregiously misbehaving, the national government can step in,
> but they usually don't

On the other hand, your city is also subject to its constituents, who care
more about what happens there than people in the nation's capital do, so you
already have a mechanism to hold them to account when they misbehave. (And the
city has jurisdiction over the local landlords.)

Meanwhile, what do you do if the national government is doing something that
ruins your life, but there aren't enough similarly situated people to get them
to stop? If it was only a city you could at least move.

> if I switch landlords, let alone cities, my address changes

This is costly. It could still be less costly than having nowhere to hide from
policies that cause you significant harm, which makes the availability of that
option very valuable.

> I can choose a landlord and to a lesser extent a city by reputation, but I
> might end up choosing a city because it's where I want to be for business
> etc. reasons, even if I disagree with its leadership choices

It's all trade offs. If you really want to be there for business reasons and
mildly dislike their policies then you might go there anyway. If there are
minor business reasons they're preferable but their policies make your life
unlivable you might go somewhere else. This is still better than having the
unlivable policies imposed nationally, whereupon you would choose your
location for business reasons (because the ruinous policy is everywhere), but
still have a worse life than having to move to avoid bad policies, because
then you'd at least have actually avoided them.

> I have limited ability to influence my city's decision-making and
> essentially no ability to influence my nation's decision-making, but it's
> not unheard of

It's not a binary matter of impossibility, it's a matter of difficulty level.
Getting your city to do something is a lot easier than getting your whole
country to do it, and they're more likely to be receptive to local problems
because a larger percentage of their constituents are affected by them.

> Which all seems very similar to having a choice of registrar, limited choice
> of TLD/registry, no choice in ICANN, the theoretical (and practical, in this
> case) ability to influence ICANN, and the ability to change registrars and
> TLDs if I like.

It's not the wrong analogy, the question is how much (if any) of the authority
actually has to be in ICANN. You could in theory give them no power at all, or
have them not exist, and rest control of each gTLD entirely with its
respective registrar.

I could even turn it around and say that the problem here is that the .org
registry is itself too centralized and once it delegates a name to someone it
should cease to be under the registrar's control and become permanently under
the control of the domain owner, so that who owns .org would only matter to
new registrants and not existing ones who already have their delegations.

~~~
geofft
I agree that all of these things are bad - my point is that it's the worst
system _except for all the others_.

Neither of your proposed replacement systems seem like they'd make things
overall _better_ with regards to the actual concerns of .org domain name
owners.

~~~
Supermancho
I don't think you made your point at all.

> My landlord and my city are both subject to laws from a national government,
> and if they're egregiously misbehaving, the national government can step in,
> but they usually don't.

It looks like a bait-and-switch by trying to perform some comparison to a non-
centralized authority while invoking it (using the odd "national government"
phrase) in the same breath.

~~~
geofft
I'm responding to this specific claim:

> _The 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._

In this comment, "central authority" means ICANN, who has oversight over
registry operations, _not_ the .org registry themselves.

I am reading this comment as saying that the very idea of having a centralized
authority like ICANN is dangerous and we need something else (like a
blockchain or whatever). I am claiming that it's fine because the alternatives
are all worse.

The next comment tried to say, well, in the case of physical housing, your
landlord or city doesn't have total control. But the landlord or city is not
in the place of the "central authority" here - they are analogous to a
registrar or registry. In the same way that my national government is flawed
but better than not having one, ICANN is flawed but better than not having it.

------
ohashi
As 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-s...](https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2020/05/01/reflecting-on-org-sale-
being-blocked/)

~~~
coldpie
It'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.

------
praseodym
PIR’s response is at [https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/statements-in-
response-t...](https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/statements-in-response-to-
april-30-2020-decision-from-icann)

~~~
lovehashbrowns
It'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
Erik 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.

------
axaxs
Great news! Now they should find new stewards for .org, since PIR/ISOC have
shown they cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

------
mehrdadn
I'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.

------
ineedasername
Now 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.

------
Thorentis
I 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.

------
rasz
Wait a ~year, move non-profit out of California/USA, try again.

------
tenant
I 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
The 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
thanks for the information

------
aurizon
This 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...

------
p4bl0
Victory! This is an awesome news, and a very nice one to wake up to on the 1st
of May ;).

------
joshuaellinger
And 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
Sadly only sometimes.

------
ggm
I 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)

~~~
kelnos
IIRC someone in a previous post here about this, someone did the math and
found that, based on .org revenues, ISOC would make the intended sale price in
something on the order of 10 years. It's remarkably short-sighted to sell a
cash cow like that just to get some money in-hand sooner.

~~~
ggm
I too would have favoured setting up the endowment by investment over the
longer term: the kind of approach which could have been discussed in a
community-consensus way.

It speaks to me, that ISOC decided not to explore that and then went single-
buyer, NDA+Lawyers.

------
renewiltord
ISOC is an unacceptable steward. Time to take .org away from them.

------
foobarbazetc
Wow. Unexpected. Didn’t know we could still have nice things.

------
jtl999
Hopefully 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.

------
sunstone
The 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.

------
cybert00th
Yes!

.org domain names are safe from the corporate raider sharks

for now

~~~
JohnL4
"for now" being key. Nothing like this is ever fixed.

------
128384n
Temporary. 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.

------
staticautomatic
I support this but how does the State of California have standing?

~~~
aspenmayer
‘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)

------
ludditetech
Wow, was a sad day when I first read this was happening, cant believe it, good
things can still happen. Awesome!

------
ivanstame
ICANN has lost its credibility.

------
kunkurus
I think the comments section is closed on the ICANN's blog page.

------
drawkbox
The ringwraiths will be back, but for now the shire is safe.

------
quezzle
Cause it’s the finish of icann’s credibility if they do.

------
cl3m
Thanks to anyone who helped! That's great.

------
DarkmSparks
overwhelming relief they "won" this one, deep grief in the knowledge there is
no way the leeches give up on it.

------
DeathArrow
They 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.

------
heraclius
Bravo!

------
john4532452
This is a big win, but do not forget Google is in the board of ICANN.

------
kyrra
As 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?

~~~
pmachinery
As 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.

~~~
ohashi
.org has been the defacto home of non profits on the internet for decades. PIR
being awarded the contract was in no small way because of their non profit
nature. Pretending otherwise is being intentionally misleading.

.ORG has been more expensive than .COM lately because of price increases and
the fact ICANN uncapped them was a major concern. Which is what sparked this
whole saga, and opportunity for an uncapped monopoly which would
disproportionately affect non profit users of the internet.

The non profit aspect plays a major role in this.

~~~
pmachinery
Please don't throw out accusations of being "intentionally misleading" just
because you don't accept or understand 100% factual information that's been
posted.

Fact: .ORG - like virtually every other extension - has been the home of
_anyone who wants to register it_ for decades (two), even prior to the
establishment of PIR in 2003.

It was specifically intended for non-profits a generation ago, for a
relatively brief 10-15 year period, during most of which relatively few people
were online, relatively few websites existed and relatively few .ORGs were
registered.

For the past 20 years, a period when millions of .ORGs have been registered,
there has been nothing special about .ORG other than its grossly inflating
price, which has been continuously jacked up for more than a decade.

Any non-profit genuinely concerned about watching the pennies would have
shifted to a different extension years ago, but is it supposed to be a comfort
for .ORG owners who don't want to give up a name (like myself), that the
people screwing us over call themselves "not-for-profit"?

Who cares who's doing it, other than the people suddenly complaining because a
for profit company might become involved in a money printing exercise.

