
ISOC sold the .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B - dano
https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/advancing-the-internet-societys-mission-into-the-future
======
dang
The major threads so far, from most comments to fewest:

"Save .org":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677)

"Why I Voted to Sell .ORG":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656960)

"ICANN races towards regulatory capture: the great .org heist":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21626677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21626677)

"ICA asks ICANN to block .Org private equity deal in damning letter":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557779)

"Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold to private equity firm":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21592297)

"Private Equity Is Going to Ruin the .Org Domain System and Screw Nonprofits":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21582622)

Did I miss any?

~~~
miles
Here are a few more I posted that failed to get much traction:

Ethos/PIR Funded and Led a Scorched Earth Campaign Against Communities at
ICANN
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659409)

The .ORG Sale Is a Radical Departure That Puts the Internet at Risk
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659278)

Vint 'father of the 'net' Cerf dodges dot-org sell-off during public Q&A
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21659240)

This submission by almostbasic offers an excellent overview:

.ORGanized Takeover – a timeline of the ISOC, PIR & Ethos Capital Deal
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21630179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21630179)

~~~
jacquesm
Vint Cerf did a lot of good but he also worked real hard to undo his legacy
over the past decade or so. Unless I'm really mis-understanding him I keep
finding myself on the opposite side of what he's arguing for.

~~~
rhizome
If this goes through, I hope this is all he is remembered for.

Like Hans Reiser.

~~~
dang
That's beyond the pale. Please don't do internet hell here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
rhizome
What other example can I draw from? Pragmatism is all I was going for.

------
drawkbox
The time of .org as 'trusted' is over.

When a private equity investment firm buys something, they plan to extract
value, they don't create value.

Ethos Capital was formed in 2019 [1]. Price caps were lifted before it was
sold [2]. Combined with the billion plus valuation, something is sketchy. Even
if you trust this sale, they could even resell it to a less trustworthy owner
after increasing rates making a return on investment, that is probably the
plan.

.orgs will be filled with extortion to good .orgs, and fake .orgs will be
created which will create distrust about existing .orgs, and allow propaganda
to spread.

There will be tons of malware and phishing going on when people think they are
on trustable domains.

If they could buy .gov they would. Just more of the turn of the internet to
authoritarian/corporate control over the internet's anti-
authoritarian/public/independent roots.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos_Capital)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/private-
equity-f...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/private-equity-firm-
buys-org-domain-months-after-icann-lifted-price-caps/)

~~~
rgbrenner
.org is an unrestricted gtld... You don't have to be a non-profit to register
a .org.. you just need $10. So I don't know what trust you're referring to.

If you've been putting any trust into a website because it's a .org, that was
your mistake... It's been unrestricted for a very long time.

Ethos changes nothing in that regard.

~~~
jerry1979
I trusted that some committee somewhere was trying to make an honest go of it
with this Internet thing [1]. With the selling of ORG, I lost some trust in
the administration of the domain name system. Most people already knew anyone
could register a .org domain. That really wasn't the point.

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc920)

~~~
psds2
That RFC never went into effect. Perhaps it is a good thing that the illusion
of .org trust has been shattered for many.

~~~
williamdclt
I don't think I know anybody non-technical (and not that many technical people
either) that has any idea what these ".com", ".net", ".org" things are or that
they can mean different things.

Most people don't even know that there was an illusion that's supposed to be
shattered

------
walrus01
ISOC is redacting its own meeting minutes. The part here about "PIR business"
is about the sale of .org (public interest registry).

What the hell?

[https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-
trustees/minutes/](https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/minutes/)

Ctrl-f for "redact"

~~~
mthoms
Ctrl-f for the involvement of "Goldman Sachs".

~~~
walrus01
I actually missed that part but now the urge to facepalm is even greater.

------
jml7c5
I suppose the question is who will do something about this.

What group or individual is going to slog through the work of getting this
investigated?

What group or individual is going to slog through a lawsuit?

Would the EFF take it up, or is it outside their purview?

Is there any hope of reversal/fines/prosecution? Will it hinge on intent? Does
that intent exist, or was ISOC just foolish? If there was intent, can that
intent be shown beyond a reasonable doubt? Or is there some rigid,
incontrovertible rule that has been broken, such that intent doesn't matter?

All in all, it seems like such a stupid financial decision by ISOC (and one
which goes _against_ their mission) that one can't help but presume some sort
of foul play. But who knows, perhaps they just messed up.

~~~
elihu
An alternative "do something about it" option is to just create a new name
system (either based on DNS protocols, or something entirely new) that is
controlled by someone more responsible. DNS is just an internet application
like anything else, nothing is forcing us to use it aside from its broad
adoption and lack of support for anything else in modern applications.

What it comes down to is: who is both sufficiently dissatisfied with the way
DNS is managed and has the clout to get a large group of organizations to move
to an alternative? Or perhaps: what is the killer app that is incompatible
with how ISOC runs things that would get people to switch?

~~~
qes
> nothing is forcing us to use it aside from its broad adoption and lack of
> support for anything else in modern applications

"nothing"

IPv6 should give you some idea how easy your "nothing" is to change.

------
geogriffin
Does anyone have a clue if they'll manage to keep their 501(c)(3) status with
$1.1 billion in profit for 2019? My understanding is that profits like this
unrelated to their normal business activies are taxable, and may also cause
the IRS to reconsider their non-profit status and/or levy penalties [1].

[1] [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-
business...](https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business-
income-defined)

~~~
matt4077
The $1.1 billion isn't profit. They're selling an asset (the .org rights).
That transaction should be entirely neutral in terms of profit/loss.

~~~
abbadadda
In what world are the majority of asset sales untaxed? Look at stocks, bonds,
bitcoin, homes, art, gold, silver... All assets and all taxable upon realized
gains and losses.

------
Dwolb
From the “Why I Voted to Sell .ORG” article

> This transaction will put that bigger mission on a solid footing — so that
> the Internet Society can provide much more substantive help to nonprofits
> than merely leasing domain names, and with more continuity over time.

I’m really disappointed in this perspective - the mission is now growing
outside of its current operations (ie conquesting) AND will now have a slug of
cash which they’ve never properly managed before.

The Internet needs them to be conservative stewards but they want to grow
outside of that.

Further more the article goes through “protections” that are in place for
Ethos to keep prices reasonable. The issue is these protections aren’t all
contractually obligated and even those written are weak.

Of course private equity is going to get a return on capital on $1B invested.
Their incentive is to push the boundary as far as it can possibly go to find
the profit maximizing point.

Would love to hear more arguments for and against.

~~~
travisporter
I read this as “everything has a price.” Disappointing.

------
rs23296008n1
Sounds like a lot of money for something that should actually only be a minor
administrative cost.

Something smells. Perhaps a few audits, some regulation and a lot more
oversight by people who are less "enthusiastically driven by negotiable
pleasantries" would help?

~~~
3xblah
Domain names were initially provided free of charge. I once saw an estimate
that put the administrative cost of a domain name at less than 20 cents. Then
came "NewCo", now known as ICANN, and the "business" of "selling" domain
names.

Verisign, the operator of .com, arguably the most important TLD, operates the
com registry subject to agreements with US Department of Commerce and ICANN.
These contracts now let them keep raising prices gradually. It is doubtful
that these increases reflect or are in any way proportional increases in
administrative costs.

~~~
fanf2
When ICANN was founded, the DNS was almost entirely monopolized by Network
Solutions who sold domains for $100 per year. The process was very manual and
time consuming (think old-style TLS certificates). ICANN’s purpose was to
break up the monopoly by setting up the two-level registry/registrar system,
by creating more TLDs, and by taking away some TLDs. Verisign, through various
acquisitions and sell-offs, the descendent of Network Solutions, and still
dominates.

~~~
3xblah
I also remember it was $50/year for a time. A 100% increase/decrease. The fees
were/are arbitrary and do not correlate to administrative costs.

------
rmah
Question: what even gives ISOC the right to sell it? IIRC, they were granted
control by the US gov, but that is not the same as ownership.

~~~
adventured
Likely the same contractual basis that granted the transferal of Network
Solutions to VeriSign via acquisition, which brought along control over .com
and .net. There are probably terms that allow for the control to be
transferred via sale in some manner. Ultimately, either way, the US Government
allows it to happen; they could intervene if they cared to and make the sale
untenable.

It's such a good rent extraction business that Berkshire Hathaway has
accumulated 11% of VeriSign. Last year VeriSign's gross profit margin was 82%
and their net income margin was a staggering 47% (a level you never see from
major public companies, outside of rare cases like Visa or Facebook).

------
2pointsomone
You know what an NTEN in partnership with a mega tech company (e.g. Google)
should do? Buy a TLD that replaces .org and seamlessly transition (for free
for 2 years or so) every .org owner. It's not impossible to imagine a mass
exodus from .org that the search engines, browsers, and DNS providers quickly
respond to.

And give ICANN the biggest sign of how this should never happen again.

~~~
xenophonf
What about individuals like me? I'm not a non-profit. I'm a hobbyist who's
been using a .org domain for 25 years, very nearly my entire adult life. My
entire digital identity is tied up in it. I have hundreds of accounts and
email addresses and subscriptions that I'd have to change if my mail domains
suddenly became unaffordable. This is madness.

~~~
2pointsomone
Yes good point, that is why a TLD which recognizes you as a non-profit would
not be a good idea. You would probably be just fine with .org regardless of
whether a more apt TLD is going to be created.

~~~
oefrha
> why a TLD which recognizes you as a non-profit would not be a good idea.

.org hasn't been restricted to non-profits since forever ago (even when it was
the restriction wasn't enforced). It was, until very recently, a TLD
supposedly run by a non-profit as part of the Internet infrastructure so that
people would expect reasonable pricing, unlike others.

> You would probably be just fine with .org

Similar to gp I built my identity around an .org (though not as long). I
certainly won't be fine if Ethos decides to jack the price of my domain to
hundreds of dollars per year.

------
evross
Sounds like a cash-out or a kickback. Still not worth any more money than ISOC
was already making. ISOC should listen and row back on this decision.

There are more than ten thousand signatures on
[https://savedotorg.org/](https://savedotorg.org/).

~~~
shadowgovt
That's seriously a tiny drop in the bucket in terms of total internet usage.

~~~
soraminazuki
That's only because most internet users don't even know what a domain is.

~~~
shadowgovt
Then why would they care if the domain is .org, .com, or .xyz?

This whole concern sounds like a tempest in a teapot.

~~~
soraminazuki
It matters, because large scale domain migration would have very serious
consequences for users even if they didn't know what a domain is.

------
jka
This isn't a defense or a criticism of the decision, but it looks like the
board of ISOC voted unanimously to enter exclusive negotations with Ethos -
their minutes are available online:

[https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-
trustees/minutes/14...](https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-
trustees/minutes/147)

That could indicate that there's more background and context than has been
published, since the outcry seems so contrary to the vote.

Either way there's missing public information and for an important resource
like .org that's going to cause problems given a sudden change.

~~~
theli0nheart
I don’t understand what you’re implying, other than “this thing exists”.

Read those minutes, and you’ll find that every “interesting” section is filled
with redacted text. If anything, that should make any outside observer _more_
skeptical.

------
sgc
What other TLDs does ISOC control directly? Why sell .org and not another TLD?
Is not .org at the heart of the ethos of a free and open internet? This feels
like an intentional corruption of ISOC to discredit it's future activity and
thereby change the course of future mechanisms for control of TLDs by changing
narratives, public opinion, etc. This is so odd I would not be surprised if it
one day comes to light that there were State actors at play making sure this
deal happened. To me it seems like a point of immediate international security
to scrutinize this transaction and invalidate it if required.

~~~
cardamomo
Can you please elaborate on what you judge to be potential international
security concerns in this case?

~~~
sgc
Outside of the recent TLD expansion (which presents its own ethical concerns
similar to this one), TLDs are almost all controlled by governments. In an
ideal world those that aren't should be operated as a utility and prices kept
at a legal minimum to support operations, due to their critical nature for
human communication and the fact they are natural monopolies. Anything that
moves away from that, such as moving from a nonprofit control to a venture
capital control, should be rejected due to the risk of pricing out legitimate
users of the tld and other unregulated behaviors which might benefit a
business but not the democratic nature of the internet (such as allowing for
preferred pricing or other transaction details with certain entities, or
anything else they can imagine and get away with). These concerns are
compounded by the intention of the Public Interest Registry, which is to
provide TLDs for nonprofits -- which should be proactively protected from
predatory business practices. Further, the buyer openly plans on raising
prices extremely fast and will definitely price out at least some of the most
vulnerable users of the TLD, and introduce hardship on others. If you love the
internet you should hate this.

On the situation of gaming the system by a State actor, obviously there has
been a long standing push to get ICANN and the US GOV out of the internet
infrastructure. Creating chaos, little, by little, lends credence to this push
or another similar one. That vacuum would probably be filled in places like
Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, etc by easier government censorship, including
(they would hope) more control over their smaller neighbors' internet. The
current situation is of course not perfect, but one can see why subversive
action could be a chosen path by any one of several state actors.

------
nikolay
The seizing of .org is a scheme. I hope the US government steps in and puts
the crooks in prison. Seriously, removing the caps right before the sale is a
scheme with ICANN people paid under the table.

------
Titanous
Here’s the primary source: [https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/advancing-the-
internet-s...](https://www.keypointsabout.org/blog/advancing-the-internet-
societys-mission-into-the-future)

~~~
wmf
"The Internet Society will receive this as a fund that it will invest as an
endowment... This funding is sufficient to provide the Internet Society with
broadly equivalent annual earnings we currently receive from PIR. And through
responsible, well managed investment, we believe this fund will provide a
comparable level of funding to the Internet Society in perpetuity."

Translation: "We sold the Internet to vultures (super-nice vultures! you won't
believe how nice they are!) so that we could have... basically the same cash
flow that we already had. But now we're going to deal with bankers instead of
Afilias."

~~~
FireBeyond
I wonder how good their investment strategy is that 1.1B will earn them
$120M/year in income, that's nearly 11% return...

~~~
wmf
No, it sounds like they're aiming for $50M/year.

~~~
FireBeyond
Which then, if so, doesn't really add up... how is $50M "broadly equivalent"
to $120M??

------
glitcher
And where are bigger news outlets to be found when it comes to reporting on
this? Who besides those of us inside the tech bubble have even heard of the
issue, much less would even care?

It reminds me of the struggle to communicate to the general population the
issue of Net Neutrality. That issue seemed to enjoy MUCH more coverage and yet
(anecdotally), all my non-techie family and friends still didn't know what it
was.

Recently I sent a "story idea" submission to NPR to ask them to cover this
issue in a way that can help illuminate the dark corners of this story to the
broader population. Unfortunately so many of the other major news outlets are
so sensationalized that I wouldn't trust them to report on it accurately.

What other organizations have a broad reach that we should be contacting to
encourage covering this? I don't know anyone outside tech checking in with
eff.org on a regular basis, and many certainly don't have save.org on their
radar. Any suggestions?

------
vermontdevil
Translation: the annual max of 10% price increases are gonna happen.

------
throwaway85728
Can somebody help understand the pricing of domains?

Reading the threads, I came across various prices. In case of .com, I saw
ICANN fees of $0.18, Verisign fees of $7.85, and then there are registrar
fees, eg. Godaddy $18.17.

Is Godaddy paying Verisign or only ICANN? The reason I'm confused is that the
threads mention domain brokers hoard domains because they are so cheap
($0.18?). On the other hand, I understand Verisign is operating .com, so they
would always get their fees as well?

~~~
wmf
All domains go through the registry; for .com that's Verisign. So you can't
get a .com domain cheaper than ~$8. Nobody is hoarding domains for cents,
although domain tasting was a hot thing for a while.

------
shotashotashota
Really...what the hell do they do to deserve a 1.1b$ evaluation? Are they
manually checking the validity of .org domains? What do they do??? Christ,
this is just blatant corruption its so depressing

Why do they need to make a profit in the first place?? Do everything needs to
be profitable??

~~~
cortesoft
They earned that valuation by having a monopoly on a desirable TLD. They don't
provide that much value, this is simple rent seeking.

------
vunie
move you domains off isoc-controlled tlds as soon as you can. It'll probably
take some time for them to actually raise prices. Use this time to point your
visitors/search engines to your new domain.

~~~
IceWreck
What other major tlds do they own?

------
jellicle
A lot of comments in these threads talking about the "maximum price increases"
as 10%/year.

There aren't any maximum price increases. .org can increase to
$5000/name/year, or $50,000.

------
smsm42
Anybody can ELI5 me why it's such a huge deal? I mean .org does not have any
special meaning for a while now. Anybody can have a .org. Most commercial
entities don't do that because .org kinda implies "not business" which is
contrary to the impression most businesses want, but there's no limitation on
that if any commercial entity wants to have a .org, they can.

TLDs are virtually unrestricted now (not entirely but close to it), so you can
have me.sexy and spaghetti-monster.church if you wanted to. I know there were
price caps on .org, but frankly unless you're in heavy SEO/marketing game -
which most nonprofits aren't - domain name costs aren't that major expense
even for commercial companies. And dozens, now hundreds of TLDs are being
managed by commercial entities without Internet descending into chaos and
ruin. So why does the Internet world "despair" about this thing?

------
bradleyjg
I don't understand how a non-profit can be purchased. Virginia must have some
strange corporate law.

~~~
jml7c5
_IANAL._

Wouldn't this be a sale of a non-profit's assets, rather than a sale of the
non-profit itself? I see no legal reason a non-profit can't sell, e.g., a
building it owns.

Everything else seems skeevy, but this particular angle does not seem
promising for a basis of any legal proceedings.

~~~
bradleyjg
The press release says "Ethos Capital’s acquisition of Public Interest
Registry from the Internet Society". Public Interest Registry says on its
website: "Based in Reston, Virginia, Public Interest Registry is a not-
for–profit organization created by the Internet Society (ISOC), originally to
manage the .ORG domain." and has links to IRS Form 990.

It's possible that Ethos Capital is being imprecise are not technically
acquiring PIR, but it certainly reads that way.

~~~
jml7c5
Ah, my mistake. Yes, that does seem... well, legally complicated, to say the
least.

------
Russelfuture
Ok, Read the story/read the comments - the 1.135 billion $USD got my
attention. First "WTF?" was same as "corndoge": Who the hell is "The Internet
Society?" Lotta reading... and then the penny hit the floor: "Ah! A bunch of
clever boys in Cali got the US gov. to give them admin. of the ".org" domain
name that folks used if they hacked/outbid/cheatedoutof their .com TLD? (I
lost mine to Serbian jewel thieves..) It became the PIR, and the guys running
it got to drop the $ from registrations into a non-profit, and claim
administrator salaries, board seats, nice Cali. offices, and all the perks.
But their was both risk and work involved, and the non-profit status, meant
they cculdn't pocket profits and make a big score. But along comes this idea:
They can flog the ".org" registry, and its recurring revenue-stream, to a
"for-profit" entity that a couple of insiders create just for this purpose.
"Whoopdedo" notes that dns data indicates each user of .org is valued at about
$135. Based on telco and cable company purchases, that valuation per
subscriber looks about right. The two insiders take the valuation data to
moneyboys, and suggest that the rev. stream can be jacked maybe 10% per year,
best case. The moneyguys agree to fund the deal into the 10 digit range, and
the project gets the greenlight. The plan offers "The Internet Society" a
massive payday, which as even their own pressnotes say, will give them the
same revenue, but without having to do any work, deal with actual users, or
take any operational or legal risk of any kind. As another users suggests -
They can "raise awareness" from nice Cali. offices, and then break for lunch.

But the whole deal smells a bit of sulfur and hotwind, no?

Or did I miss something? How did the "Internet Society" get its "ownership" of
the .org TLD registry? Did they buy it? If they bought it, then for how much?
From my understanding, they just got given it, by the US Gov't., with a
mandate to run it at cost, more or less.

So, as some suggest, there is a risk that the $1.1 billion could be considered
a pure profit - which would seem to put their non-profit status at risk.

Also, by selling the very thing they were established to administer, that
should maybe terminate their mandate, and one might also argue that the $1.1
billion represents funds that belong to existing .org registrants, and should
be refunded to them all.

The "Internet Society" is not a for-profit corporation, right? So where do
they get off by just wrapping up their administrator-role in a big package,
and selling - without any bidding process even - to a couple of folks who
promise to maybe raise the user-fees by 5 times the rate of inflation for the
next few years?

How do "Board Members" of the "Internet Society" actually get to become "Board
Members" of the "Internet Society"? Who appoints them? Shareholders? Not
likely.

The note from the "Barnes" fellow is interesting. He was the "Security" guy at
Cisco, apparently. Now, those guys at Cisco, I've heard of them. They sell all
those American-designed routers that beacon all their traffic and meta-data
back to the NSA servers. I'm sure that's a fine thing to do, as it keeps us
safe from bad guys.

But when I look at the details of this proposed deal, I start to wonder who
the "bad guys" really are.

I have an alternate "deal" idea: Fire all the "Board Members" of "The Internet
Society". Tell them "Thank you for your contribution." and send them home.
Replace them all with different folks who might be expected to have a better
understanding of what their role should be. Just an idea. And it won't cost
$1.135 billion USD. And it won't require the .org domain be re-priced.

------
BrandoElFollito
My thought is "and so what?"

Domains are a monoploy with outrageous fees for new TLDs. This is what should
be fought and not the fact they one of the TLDs is under the control of yet
another entity.

------
corndoge
Good, let them have it. If they screw over .org owners as everyone fears, then
perhaps there will be increased awareness and incentive to use or develop
alternatives to registrars.

------
edoceo
OpenNIC is looking better and better.

~~~
StudentStuff
ISPs buying in were OpenNIC's stumbling block (as no normal user is changing
their default DNS), ultimately that is why OpenNIC never took off.

The only way an alternate DNS could become popular is if Apple, Google or
Mozilla (assuming a resurgence in Firefox popularity) were pushing an
alternative DNS.

~~~
edoceo
It's not too late. Eternal vigilance! I fight for the user!

------
orliesaurus
Does anyone remember the dotp2p project to create a mobile-first decentralized
DNS? Probably around 2011? The core ideas are still valid today it seems.

------
tatersolid
I control a three-letter .org domain on behalf of a non-profit. Was offered
$500K for it a decade ago, by a for-profit entity.

.org has never meant non-profit in reality.

Considering the non-profit this domain supports is 95 years old and the domain
was registered in 1995, though, selling it and switching is a non-starter.
Unnecessarily annoying times ahead.

------
bittercynic
Anyone know what is the likely outcome if I pay in advance for several years
to keep my .org domains?

------
corndoge
Who the fuck is the internet society

~~~
dboreham
Layer 8

------
mobilefriendly
In my experience a lot of corporate and government wrong-doing is
targeted/revealed around Thanksgiving holidays, so that people and the media
don't notice.

------
neiman
This is quite strangely written, but if I understood correctly:

\- they got $1.1 B for selling PIR \- the will build a new misterious
endowment to manage this money,

right?

------
Ericson2314
Can Firefox and chromium give OpenNic a bump with DNS over https?

I am just learning about OpenNic, so apologies if what I said makes no sense.

------
necovek
"This funding is sufficient to provide the Internet Society with broadly
equivalent annual earnings we currently receive from PIR."

How is it possible to sell something for the value of annual earnings? That
means that Ethos Capital will return their entire investment in 1 year —
that's preposterous!

What am I missing? I can't imagine any business deal like this going through,
it's clearly detrimenal to Internet Society which's going to lose a big
regular income.

~~~
EwanToo
I'm sure this means if they invest the $1 billion they'll get annual returns
equivalent to the money they get from .org

~~~
necovek
Thanks for the clarification: that, at least, makes more sense than my
original reading.

Still seems weird Internet Society would move from maintaining .org to
investing for no real gain, but at least it's not "preposterous" as I
originally claimed.

------
whoopdedo
There's slightly under 10MM .org domains registered, according to statdns.com.
So each name is worth $135 to them.

~~~
theli0nheart
That’s actually not completely unreasonable, given that domain registration
payouts are essentially perpetuities. If a popular, long-standing domain gets
dropped, it’s likely it’ll just get picked up by someone else.

------
jchook
Cool how technology allows us to decentralize DNS yet no one uses it.

------
OrgNet
they should have auctioned it... and get 10x more

~~~
dpau
i think the point was to sell it to friends at a discount

~~~
josteink
Specifically at a 10x discount.

------
millettjon
Time for blockchain based DNS.

------
crucialfelix
Well thank God: wasm.org already forwards to webassembly

------
walrus01
I'm going to copy and paste my own comment from 7 days ago, because I think
the quote contained within the Register article is so damning.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612033)

Some further background on what happened. I don't see how this can be
interpreted as anything other than corruption, plain and simple.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/)

"Former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade personally registered the domain name currently
used by Ethos Capital in May and it was registered as a limited company in the
US state of Delaware on May 14. That date is significant because it is one day
after ICANN indicated it was planning to approve the lifting of price caps
through its public comment summary.

As such it appears that the plan to purchase the .org registry was predicated
on the price caps going ahead and that those behind the deal had intricate
knowledge of ICANN’s internal processes."

~~~
noobermin
Is this potentially illegal?

~~~
dd36
Self-dealing?

------
dano
Note that I've not found confirmation of this story and hope that someone has
a second source.

~~~
fanf2
Also reported at [https://domainnamewire.com/2019/11/29/ethos-
paid-1-135-billi...](https://domainnamewire.com/2019/11/29/ethos-
paid-1-135-billion-for-org/)

------
olliej
So they expect to be able recoup that billion dollars. There’s no way that’s
going to be done without screwing everyone.

------
wessorh
just fucking wow. ISOC didn't need that money, the internet is fucked. We need
to start working to decentralize naming. I loved the internet before ICANN and
DNS. We fucked and built a monster.

~~~
quickthrower2
What was pre dns like? Just ip addresses?

~~~
dboreham
No there was a hosts file. DNS solved the problem that the file was getting
too large and took too much admin overhead to copy around.

~~~
neurostimulant
Maybe this event will force us to take alternative dns more seriously. Maybe
OpenNIC, Namecoin or other related technologies I'm not aware of will finally
gain more traction?

------
pookeh
DNS need to move to blockchain. End this shenanigans with centralized
ownerships.

~~~
ShorsHammer
Public key crypto as used by tor is probably a satisfactory level of
decentralisation without all the extra steps and inevitable fraudulence from
blockchain types.

Convincing people to use alternate resolvers is the real problem. Already
chrome has stripped out most of a URI, and from memory they are planning to go
further, changing public perception around an "ugly" address is very much a
social challenge rather than technical.

~~~
Avamander
Tor also allows everyone to keep an URL instead of having to worry about being
outbid or just being able to pay anything.

~~~
ShorsHammer
Exactly, it's a fair and equitable process, I have my doubts about the various
blockchain implementations despite being quite close to some of them. If you
are a company with branding needs you can always go the facebookcorewwwi.onion
route.

