
Why I Voted to Sell .ORG - danyork
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_org/
======
ptest1
I don’t understand how this “sale” is legal in the first place.

PIR is a legal 501(c)3 nonprofit. You can’t really sell a nonprofit to a for-
profit company except in unusual and rare circumstances.

In California, I know you need a letter from the state Attorney General to do
so.

There are also federal restrictions on sales like this, particularly around
self-dealing transactions. This transaction was obviously self dealing.

Someone seriously needs to dig into this. The PIR board members could be in
big legal trouble. And also ICANN, which is a 501(c)3 nonprofit as well and is
subject to self-dealing restrictions.

This is obvious, plain as day corruption. In the business world, not much can
be done. But these are two nonprofits (PIR and ICANN), so something can and
should be done. These kind of transactions aren’t normally legal.

Like, just read the examples of what an illegal self dealing transaction is in
the eyes of the IRS:

[https://boardsource.org/resources/private-benefit-private-
in...](https://boardsource.org/resources/private-benefit-private-inurement-
self-dealing/)

“Keep Our City Beautiful, a membership organization, plants a city alley with
elaborate flowering bushes. The alley is not heavily traveled but the
decorations increase the attractiveness of the city’s main restaurant whose
owner is a member of the organization.”

ICANN clearly engaged in an illegal self dealing transaction by allowing their
former CEO to enrich himself with a deal that would otherwise not be possible.

Edit: please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658324)
for a “what you can do right now”

~~~
zrm
Not only that, isn't there a sense in which a TLD is not actually property at
all? The DNS operates by consensus. There are a bunch of root server operators
who all agree who operates the .org TLD and then list those NS records in
their root servers.

What stops people from getting together, agreeing that a private equity firm
would be a poor steward of the .org TLD, choosing somebody else to operate it
instead, and pointing the NS records there instead?

Nobody really owns the DNS. It's a thing that works because there is a broad
consensus on how it should work. If the consensus is that this is a dumb idea
then what's stopping people from choosing not to go along with it?

And staging a coup over this would set a good precedent that these types of
flagrant money grabs are not to be tolerated.

~~~
jagged-chisel
Who owns the root DNS servers? Can those owners be convinced to stage such a
coup? If not 100%, then you have forked a TLD.

~~~
gorgoiler
Edit: sorry, re-reading your coup plot I see you wanted the owners of
{A..M}.ROOT-SERVERS.NET to collude in direct action. It’s not an implausible
idea at all, if the worst comes to the worst, even if it’s quite extreme. My
original comment misses your point a bit...

...

If you want to fix this by direct action on the root servers, rather than
ORG’s nameservers, the it doesn’t matter who owns the current root servers.

Their config is baked into your resolver’s installation files or source code,
and my naive understanding is that it takes only one patch to change each one:

[https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-
projects/bind9/blob/master/lib/dn...](https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-
projects/bind9/blob/master/lib/dns/rootns.c)

...though the changes would be fragmented until the patch had been rolled out
to 100% of resolver codebases and all instances of each resolver updated and
restarted. Not an easy solution without coordinating people as well as
software.

------
danpalmer
> Make .org domain names "accessible and reasonably priced for all", including
> limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year

This immediately stuck out to me as a really bad deal.

Rising with inflation, somewhere between 1 and 4% per year, would essentially
keep prices stable. This is tricky when selling internationally, but roughly
possible.

Rising by 10% each year is significantly faster than inflation, and would
result in a $20 domain name doubling in price in 7 years, or 6x in 20 years.

This is the internet we're talking about, 20 year time horizons are important
and yet still short sighted. In 100 years we're talking $275,000 rather than
the $400 that inflation would get us to.

> Ethos has said that their plan is to "live within the spirit of historic
> practice,"

This is not what Private Equity does. It cuts costs and quality, raises
prices, strips assets, and seeks to significantly increase profits. I think
it's naive and short-sighted to take them at their word, as this article
admits they are doing.

~~~
oefrha
Not sure why OP tosses out 10% price hikes per year as reassuring. Maybe he’s
too rich to make sense of small amounts of money like this. Even $10 is a
nontrivial sum in some underdeveloped countries as is.

Also, this is just “what Ethos themselves have said about their intentions
with regard to .org”, and we all know how good for-profit entities are at
keeping promises that affect their bottom line.

~~~
cartoonworld
His argument seems to be:

1: The Internet Society does great work protecting the Internet 2: Ethos is a
worthy successor to the Internet Society as the steward of .org.

This is incoherent. THis blog post can be summed up in one sentence: "I reckon
its fine."

Thanks for voting to sell .ORG Richard Barnes. I know he thinks its fine, I
think jacking the prices up 10% year over year is nonsense. What do the
financials look like and what's the internet getting out of this?

A money grab looks like a money grab.

~~~
oefrha
.org registry was already a pretty good cash cow. According to their tax
return[1], in 2018 they grossed ~$93m over ~$33m registry administration
expense, ~$7m employee compensation (interestingly there's a 30% year over
year increase here), and some other smaller expenses. They raised $48.7m for
Internet Society. Note that out of registry administration expense, $18.1m
went to Afilias[2] (this should also be in the tax return), a _for-profit_
technical registry provider. So every time you paid your $10 .org registration
fee, at least $5 went to Internet Society as a mandatory donation, somewhere
between $0-2 went to Afilias the for-profit contractor, some small amount went
to GoDaddy for marketing, etc. Anyway, a non-profit printing $50m/yr without
begging for donations is certainly nothing to sneer at, and under the control
of a for-profit entity they should expect more even if the price stays the
same. And you bet the price won't stay the same.

[1]
[https://thenew.org/app/uploads/2019/09/PIR-2017_2018-990.zip](https://thenew.org/app/uploads/2019/09/PIR-2017_2018-990.zip)

[2] [https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/28/pir-org-slashes-
regist...](https://domainnamewire.com/2019/10/28/pir-org-slashes-registry-fee-
to-afilias-in-half-to-18-million/)

~~~
cartoonworld
As you said, according to the 2018 tax return revenues from PIR running .org
resulted in $48,000,000.00 in cash grants handed over to the Internet Society.

How much is the sale worth? That $48M Grant was worth more than Internet
Society's total revenue in 2016 according to wkipedia. ISOC just sold a
sustainable $50Million revenue stream.

If LetsEncrypt copped a $0.10 fee per certificate, how much would it cost for
Richard to rubber stamp a Symantec acquisition of LetsEncrypt?

~~~
type0
> If LetsEncrypt copped a $0.10 fee per certificate, how much would it cost
> for Richard to rubber stamp a Symantec acquisition of LetsEncrypt?

Easy now, don't give him ideas.

~~~
ohashi
Don't worry, they have your best interest at heart. With this extra money, we
can fund our certificate mission for our own personal gain forever. It's very
good for everyone.

------
jmull
Wow, this is the kind of guy running the internet... he just sold out all the
non-profits of the world. Jesus.

If you read carefully -- despite the title, he works hard to obscure it -- the
"why" is he just wants the money.

His argument about why it's OK -- "Trust me, Ethos is totally trustworthy" \--
is absurd and incoherent.

First of all, the point and purpose of private equity is to make money. To
misconstrue the issue as _distrust_ of private equity is backwards. I trust
them 100% -- to fulfill their purpose to make money. They _will_ extract money
from this investment as effectively and efficiently as they can. Raising
prices quickly is just one thing they might do, by the way. If they can find
an opportunity to make a nice and quick profit that devastates .org they won't
hesitate to take take it if it meets their current investment goals.

~~~
ohashi
I wonder how he drew the short straw to ruin his reputation with this garbage.

------
the_angry_angel
The simplified timeline (as I understand it, willing to be corrected if I'm
wrong);

1\. PIR, or someone very close, seems to have lobbied to have price
restriction of .org removed. My understanding is that PIR made the argument
that they're a non-profit, they have no reason to raise pricing extortionately

2\. This was passed, despite a large number of comments against the idea,
Ethos was incorporated the following day

3\. PIR sold itself to Ethos, a for profit company

The people involved seem to be moving between ICANN, PIR and private firms.

Given all these things I don't think it's unreasonable that people are deeply
sceptical. Especially with the ambiguity of "no more than 10% per year" being
throw around.

~~~
tinus_hn
You forgot the part where Ethos is the same people who controlled PIR. It’s
just a sleazy trick to take off the non profit veil, so they can start
skimming the profits. Does anyone really believe the non profit PIR and ISOC
couldn’t exist on their $90 million a year .org tithes?

~~~
the_angry_angel
Yeah I’d completely missed this part. Makes it even worse

------
Traster
This author is just outright naive.

>Even in the worst case, if Ethos considers dramatically increasing prices
(which, to be clear, we do not expect them to do!), the Registry Agreement for
.org requires a 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a
10-year registration at pre-increase rates. This should seriously discourage
Ethos from doing this, because it would take 10 years for the new high rate to
even take effect for existing registrants, and new registrations would likely
fall off right away.

No, the worst case scenario is that they jack up prices and then run a massive
campaign FUD campaign about non-profits without .org addresses. Or they start
selling of Oxfam.org to competitors. Or hell, they start doing differential
pricing, gouging the people they think can pay.

>We're all trying to make the Internet a better place

No we're not. Don't be an idiot. Private equity companies are making money
from investments they have no interest in making anything a better place and
it's insulting to expect people to believe that.

~~~
wpietri
I think it's worse than naive. His two points are in impossible conflict. He
wanted a pile of money for the Internet Society, enough to "secure that work's
future". But the only way selling .org is worth a pile of money is if it gets
extracted from nonprofits. With plenty of profits left over to feed the
investors who put up the initial cash.

If the Internet Society wanted to secure their future, they should have raised
a proper endowment. Or they could have kept .org and bumped the prices
modestly so it made a profit equivalent to what an endowment would pay.
Selling it to a PE company is guaranteed to be worse for .org registrants,
because the amount of money extracted will be greater, and a PE firm will be
way less accountable. Especially a shadowy one just created for this.

And for those not familiar with the horrors of PE, I recommend reading about
what happened to Simmons Mattress once the financial engineers got a hold of
it:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmon...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html)

~~~
tptacek
Help me understand what you mean by "worse than naive" here. Richard Barnes
isn't going to see a dollar of this money and wouldn't need it anyways. I
understand people disagreeing with him, but, despite being automatically
disinclined to extend good faith to anything published at CircleID, I don't
understand where anyone derives bad faith from this piece.

I thought it was tremendously useful, if only to understand what was in the
minds of the people who unanimously voted to sell .ORG.

~~~
gwd
> Help me understand what you mean by "worse than naive" here.

"Naive" in this context generally means they were overly trusting when there
was no evidence to suggest trust was warranted. I'd interpret "worse than
naive" as saying that they are actually evidence to the contrary.

The logic presented is, "We need more money, so we sold it to this private
equity firm. But don't worry, they're not going to try to squeeze lots of
money from it."

The starting point for any for-profit company -- no matter how ethically run
-- is that they buy things because the expected value to them will be higher
than the cash they paid for it. We must assume that the _expected value_ of
PIR to the equity company is higher than the amount they paid IS for it. Which
means, either IS is actually getting _less_ (or at best the same) money than
they would have for keeping PIR, or it means that Ethos is going to charge
significantly more than IS is. The fact that Ethos bought PIR is prima facae
evidence that it's a bad deal for either IS or for the internet as a whole.

I mean, there are other possibilities, but none is really good. It's possible
that someone at Ethos capital actually did want to do IS a favor, and way
over-paid for PIR. But that's just a form of embezzlement; I certainly
wouldn't feel any better to know that .org was bought by someone who was
either incompetent or a criminal.

If you want to set up a long-term self-funding organization to do good rather
than making money, you don't do private equity; you set up a foundation.
Ethos, or whoever wants to make the world a better place, could provide a loan
to such an organization.

And even if you do decide to buy something, you _put your promises in writing_
in the form of a contract.

And even supposing Ethos really does mean all the things they say. Suppose
something happens and they go bust and have to liquidate their assets. What
happens then?

There are just so many red flags here, that "too trusting" doesn't even begin
to describe it.

~~~
jfim
Your scenarios are not mutually exclusive. To maximize their expected value,
you say that they could:

1\. Earn less than IS would

2\. Charge more than IS would

It's actually:

1\. They could earn less than IS would, because they're generous, incompetent,
or some other reason

2\. They could earn more than IS would, because they increase the prices, run
PIR more efficiently than IS would, increase the number of registrations more
than IS would, or some other reason

In scenario two, which is the most interesting, they could jack up prices, but
they could also run the business better, such as running the business more
efficiently or driving more business through advertising. I agree with you
that the former is likelier, but not necessarily the only reason why the deal
would have a positive expected value for Ethos. It could be that the deal is a
win-win one, where IS gets more money than they'd be able to make out of PIR,
and yet, Ethos comes ahead too by running it better than IS could.

~~~
wpietri
If you have some evidence that this is the case, feel free to give it. But
they've already outsourced the running of the registry to somebody else, so
any obvious efficiency gains have presumably already been taken. And if they
haven't, there's no reason to think a fresh-minted PE company would do any
better than hiring a competent manager.

------
ddevault
IRS Form 13909 can be used to submit complaints about non-profit organizations
to the IRS. Here are two pre-filled Form 13909's, one for ICANN and one for
ISOC. Just print it out, add your personal information to both, and mail it to
the address listed on the bottom of the form.

[https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.pdf](https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-
form-13909.pdf)

Alternatively, this file can be opened with LibreOffice Draw to make edits and
prepare your document digitally:

[https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.odg](https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-
form-13909.odg)

lodraw crash course: F2 + click drag to make a new text box, Ctrl+[ to reduce
the font size to something reasonable, red icon in the toolbar along the top
to export as PDF. You can send the document by email to eoclass@irs.gov.

~~~
ptest1
I’m doing this! Both for PIR and ICANN.

Please see my other comment on this thread. It is likely this “sale” could be
considered illegal.

Here is the information for ICANN which can be used for the above form as
well:

[https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy18-irs-tax-
for...](https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy18-irs-tax-
form-990-return-organization-exempt-income-tax-27may19-en.pdf)

Remember that the founder of this PE firm was at ICANN, so this transaction is
self-dealing on ICANN’s end as well.

~~~
ddevault
Thanks for the ICANN info, I'll prepare a similar form for them. Do you have
some resources I can use to summarize ICANN's questionable activities?

~~~
ptest1
The former CEO of ICANN basically started the PE firm PIR was “sold” to:

[https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-
pir-...](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-ethos-
capital-deal-timeline/)

ICANN, by lifting the price restriction, was likely “in” on this deal.

When a nonprofit does something to greatly enrich a former CEO, that’s likely
self dealing and illegal in the IRS’ eyes. The CA attorney general should also
take action (ICANN is CA based).

------
ajb
Right. This guy was appointed to ISOC by IETF, unfortunately this year, so his
term lasts until 2022. However there are 4 board members whose term is up in
2020 [1], one appointed by the IETF. According to BCP77 [2] The IETF will
choose its appointee in January. Nominations for candidates for all 4
positions apparently close next week, Dec 6 [3] so anyone who has the time and
interest to scrutinise the nominees (or even propose new ones) needs to act on
this pretty soon.

[1] [https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-
trustees/](https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/) [2]
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp77](https://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp77) [3]
[https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-
trustees/elections/...](https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-
trustees/elections/2020/call-for-nominations/)

------
cbkeller
I think it's worth noting some of the timeline of this [1]:

> On May 13, 2019, ICANN announced that they would remove the price cap on
> .org registrations (despite 98% disapproval in public comments [2])

> On May 14, 2019, the private equity firm Ethos Capital was founded by former
> ICANN chief executive Fadi Chehadé and investor Erik Brooks.

> On November 13, 2019, it was announced that the Public Interest Registry
> (that manages .org) had agreed to be acquired by Ethos Capital, as its first
> investment.

> Subsequently, PIR announced it would abandon its non-profit status to become
> a B Corporation.

Is the author unaware of this, in on the deal, or just remarkably naive?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry)
[2]
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_s...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/)

~~~
ramphastidae
Of course they are aware. This post is PR bullshit to cover up the facts you
mentioned.

------
mannykannot
In which a patsy sets out the arguments by which he was manipulated.

A large part of his motivation appears to be delusions of grandeur within an
organization, the Internet Society, which, up to now, has been of no relevance
whatsoever, and which has only now achieved a degree of prominence through an
act of apparently naive stupidity.

~~~
NamTaf
Good point. They claim they need the money to further in their mission to
improve the internet, but they’re throwing out the one good thing they’re
well-known for doing (and I’m doing so, trashing their reputation amongst the
public) in order to (so they claim) bankroll other things that most people
have never heard of in relation to them. That’s an incredibly shortsighted
gamble and reeks of excuses.

------
TheRealPomax
For all the good you've done in the past and now, Richard, this is just one
long disappointing read. Between the lines, the text is "we don't have the
people to maintain PIR and decided that rather than hire people for it, we
should sell it" and then a for-profit shell was set up and PIR was funneled
over to it, and now it's no longer your problem to have to deal with. From
your perspective, that's not making things better: that's walking away from
them. And now you've made it _our_ problem, one _we don't have the power to
fix_ and from our perspective, that's not you making the internet better:
that's making our internet worse.

~~~
stefan_
For PIR, an organization that literally does nothing but collect money as it
has outsourced all of its principal obligations, they sure have a hugely
inflated wage bill at an easy 5 million a year, for a ton of various directors
and VPs.

If anything, this has been a good wakeup call that fees for .org could and
should be slashed by some 80%.

------
koolba
> Make .org domain names "accessible and reasonably priced for all", including
> limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year

There is nothing reasonable about the current prices. It’s literally a few
hundred bytes of data mostly static data.

“10% per year” means it will double every seven years. “Up to” means they will
be doing it at the maximum. And unless this is legally codified I doubt they
would adhere to that either.

------
berbec
I wonder if he really believes this when he was typing it. I find it difficult
to understand the rationale of selling ORG to private equity and the justify
it as good for the internet. I hope this line of BS turns out to be true, but
giving ORG over to a bunch of MBAs with experience in day trading does not a
confident nerd make.

------
DrScientist
This is what happens when the PR or fund raising people get in charge of a
charity - suddenly it becomes all about raising awareness or funds and not
about doing....

Why provide a service ( like .org ) when you can 'raise awareness'? Or raise
funds for others to do stuff.

The great thing about being the fund raising or awareness part is it's

1\. where the money is

2\. where the exposure is

3\. and you have no responsibility for actually delivering stuff!!!

So you can justify higher salaries for the people running the charity....

[https://hbr.org/2011/09/you-should-be-able-to-get-
rich](https://hbr.org/2011/09/you-should-be-able-to-get-rich)

------
archi42
"While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income stream,
it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business, and required a
certain amount of our resources to be spent managing that business,
distracting from the broader mission."

So, now they don't have any significant income stream anymore? Great! So once
they run out of money from the sell, they're closing down? That is, unless
they find some other way to generate a profit to burn on non-profitable-but-
good things (like they're doing now). For which .org was the perfect fit?

I mean, if THEY would have increased prices by 10% per-year for the next few
years, well, I think people would have been mad, too. But not as much as now,
since at least the money would have flown to some "good use"(tm). But now?
Cash flows to private investors, who expect (surprise!) to EARN money on that
deal.

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah this makes zero sense. If Ethos are going to keep the prices reasonable
(yeah right), they'll make the same amount of money as PIR did, so they won't
have paid more for it than PIR would earn anyway.

------
steve19
What it comes down to is the board wanted a large pile of cash so they could
do more of whatever it is they like doing, which apparently is not what many
of us think their core mission should be.

I look forward to reading how much the board members are being paid now, and
how much they will be paid in a years time.

~~~
morisy
Most non-profit boards pay $0. The Internet Society is one of them, with
Barnes taking $0 from the organization (as board members, they also have to
disclose if a related organization pays them):

[https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/54165...](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/541650477/12_2018_prefixes_54-58%2F541650477_201712_990_2018121916022417)

There are a few exceptions to the boards-get-paid-$0, but they're rare and
doubt personal financial motivations are part of the decision.

~~~
steve19
But funnily enough the trustees of the Public Interest Registry (the .Org
subsidiary) were all being paid before it was sold.

[https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/331...](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/331025119)

------
tinus_hn
Even if Ethos’ ‘intentions’ are to be taken at face value, $26 is still a
ridiculous price for basically no service. But these intentions are
essentially worthless or they’d be put in writing.

Why would there be no non-profit willing to do this ‘work’ providing this
‘service’ for whatever price you want? You should know, your organization
provides much more service for no money at all.

------
cyborgx7
I never actually stopped to consider why they chose to sell of the TLD. I
thought this was just a terrible organizational decision. Call me naive, but
it didn't occur to me that it was about the cash infusion. I can't believe
they want to jeopardize such an important part of the structure of the
internet for a one time cash infusion. Absolutely disgusting.

>If we take Ethos at their word

What a child

------
tobltobs
> This transaction will put that bigger mission on a solid footing

I don't understand how that should be true. Either Ethos would have too pay
too much or Ethos would have to be able to run this business more cost
effective. Both sounds questionable.

> While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income
> stream, ... > Establishing a more diverse portfolio of investments will
> allow us to have more predictable revenue over time.

Relatively steady sound pretty predictable to me. It will be interesting to
see who from the inner circle will benefit from those future "investments".

> Even in the worst case, ... the Registry Agreement for .org requires a
> 6-month notice period during which domain owners can lock in a 10-year
> registration at pre-increase rates.

That is wrong: "Registry Operator shall offer registrars the option to obtain
domain name registration renewals at the current price ... for periods of one
(1) to ten (10) years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than
ten (10) years."

------
jacob-malthouse
One of the big issues with this post is that it is trying to sell the terms of
the deal.

But the issue people have with it in the Internet Policy Community is not the
terms, which we no nothing about.

It is that the way it was done is a radical departure from how decisions are
normally made.

Usually you start by saying "I have a problem". In this case it would be "We
don't want to run .ORG anymore."

And then you engage the community in an open bottom-up consultative process to
come up with the optimal solution.

ISOC applied to run .ORG in 2002. They won a competition to run it against 10
other groups. Here is the original application they submitted to ICANN:

[https://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/org/applications/isoc/](https://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/org/applications/isoc/)

They said things like:

"PIR will institute mechanisms for promoting the registry's operation in a
manner that is responsive to the needs, concerns, and views of the non-
commercial Internet user community."

And:

".ORG is the home of non-commercial entities on the Internet"

[https://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/org/applications/isoc/sect...](https://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/org/applications/isoc/section8.html#c38E1)

After running .ORG since 2002, and growing it to over 10 million domains under
management under this promise, ISOC's Board suddenly and with no prior
consultation, decided to privatize it. They took that decision in a private
negotiation over less than 3 months.

That decision making process is not how the Internet maintains a stable and
secure infrastructure. It needs careful decision making to ensure reliable,
stable, and resilient operations.

------
NamTaf
If this was supposed to reassure people then I want to meet those people as I
have something to sell them. 10% per year price increases are insane! You
can’t exactly just change domain names to a cheaper option either, like say
insurance. Your whole identity is locked to it.

This only makes me more convinced that it’s a bad move.

------
greatgib
So much bullshit and so littke valid argument in this big post. But don't
worry 'Make .org domain names "accessible and reasonably priced for all",
including limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year' It can ONLY
increase of 10% per year. Like if it is a low number...

~~~
tehlike
And i dont think this is written on a contract, sounded like a mere intention.

~~~
55555
1\. We know that there's no limit in the contract, because if there was, they
would just say that.

2\. The reason there isn't a limit in the contract is because Ethos don't
actually intend to limit themselves to 10% yearly. If they did, they would
have agreed to write it into the contract, which would have let them pay less
for .org

------
jl6
This is so monumentally wrong that I have to wonder whether some kind of class
action lawsuit is inevitable. As the owner of a .org domain name, I feel
duped. I thought I was dealing (ultimately, not counting intermediate
registrars) with a non-profit organisation that had some permanent commitment
to the public good. Now I’m just renting from a landlord whose interests are
guaranteed to be the opposite of mine.

------
lioeters
> So if we take Ethos at their word, they should be just as good a steward for
> .org as the Internet Society has been

Sigh.. I'm guessing the author is/was not aware of the serious conflict of
interest among the decision-makers and private stake holders who passed
through the revolving doors of IS, ICANN, PIR, Ethos.

Voting with such naivete, especially underestimating the greed of a for-profit
organization, is not being a good steward. They've let down the public in this
decision.

------
nealabq
The Netherlands chapter of the ISOC is objecting to the .ORG sale (
[https://domainnamewire.com/tag/internet-
society/](https://domainnamewire.com/tag/internet-society/) ):

 _We believe that the 2019 decision of ISOC Global to sell PIR to private
equity firm Ethos Capital is not in line with ICANN’s criteria from 2002 and
the subsequent promise from ISOC Global. Despite ISOC Global’s assurances to
the contrary, we share the misgivings of the international community about
giving a single privately owned entity the power to raise tariffs, implement
rights protection mechanisms possibly leading to censorship, and suspend
domains at the request of local governments. We also fear that ISOC Global’s
reputation has been severely harmed by even contemplating this transaction._

 _We therefore call on ISOC Global’s leadership to reverse this decision
immediately, and do its utmost to restore faith in ISOC as the one global
organisation that through its many professionals and dedicated volunteers
sincerely strives for an internet for everyone._

------
leoedin
What is it with international supervisory bodies and blatant corruption (or
maybe incredible incompetence)? This has real parallels to the International
Olympic Committee and FIFA. I guess the parallels for all of them are a
monopolistic position (and in many cases an essentially government granted
one) with basically no oversight. Those conditions just seem to breed
corruption.

------
jacknews
So this is "we need the money to survive, and we completely trust these
private equity guys to do the right thing"

10%/year should be reaping quite some profit after a while. I wouldn't be
surprised if this is a pump-and-dump kind of deal, where PE substantially
raise prices and then sell the entity at a big profit, given the effectively
locked-in forward profits.

------
rdiddly
Idealistic greed is different from regular greed. Idealistic greed is always
about expanding the mission. To do work that's _even more_ important. To reach
_even more_ people. To expand the battle or skirmish into a full-on _war_ (see
this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612488)).
It can lead to ruin just as easily as regular greed can, particularly when you
consider that the people you end up negotiating with, who often specialize in
regular greed, are usually better at it, and aren't hobbled and constrained
the way you are by your vision or mission.

------
yesimahuman
This is so incredibly naive, and he made at least one decision based on flawed
understanding of the 10yr price lock in: only _registrar’s_ need to be
notified. It’s up to them to notify registrants. If they were looking at a
significant price increase for .org or to lock in existing customers for 10
years, would they notify their registrants? I would think no!

It’s extra sad because they had a commercial vehicle with which to further
their mission, which could have been a huge asset to the ecosystem, and
instead of finding a way to have it be a source of sustainability, they threw
it away for a one time cash infusion.

The rest of the post is just this guy trying to make himself feel better for
an awful decision.

------
huhtenberg
> _Many of the current concerns about .org are premised on a presumption that
> prices will rise_

No, they are based on the fact that it was clearly a backroom deal with no due
process that would've NEVER happened if the seller wasn't closely associated
with the buyer.

------
jdkee
“ So if we take Ethos at their word, they should be just as good a steward for
.org as the Internet Society has been, with robust ties to the community and
an explicit public-benefit orientation.”

This man is a fool.

------
thunderrabbit
How does he mention LetsEncrypt and not have http redirect to https on his
site?

~~~
icebraining
It doesn't seem to be his site.

------
jonnypotty
Its fine because we're good and we get more money and Ethos are just simply
good guys so that's good and nice so I voted "Yay" and now things are better
because my organisation can keep me in a good job doing basically nothing
whilst corporations buy up and exploit the internet.

------
jmccorm
It seems like a slap across the face that they offer _as a defense_ a 10%
increase which _compounds annually_. That isn’t a defense... it is a stunning
illustration of the problem! Even the cable companies would be jealous (while
their own customers are cutting the cord left and right).

Worse, 10%/year isn’t a contractual limitation; it is but a statement of
“intent”. It is nothing short of malfeasance to have sold a non-profit’s
operations without sufficient safeguards. And to a private equity firm?
Outrageous incompetence if not criminal in action.

His article doesn’t justify the transaction or allay reasonable concerns. In
fact, he seems to be presenting the case for why this transaction is crooked
if not criminal!

------
mod50ack
I'm a .org domain user. My email is a .org, my website is a .org. It's [my
name].org. I've registered through 2029 now. Hopefully by then this whole
nonsense has passed. Honestly domain names have been handled very poorly over
the past 10 years, between this and the ridiculous gTLD system. They are just
becoming super-expensive vanity items for corporations to get nice redirects.

~~~
flir
Ditto. surname.org here. I'm going to 10-year it, and hope DNS is somehow
obsolete in a decade, otherwise I suspect I'll get a nasty surprise.

------
55555
IMO, putting "Ethos" in the name of your private equity firm makes it a little
bit too obvious that you don't want people to realize that you care about
nothing but money.

------
mirekrusin
"(...) what Ethos themselves have said about their intentions (...)" means
nothing. They can change their mind, put new directors in a month that will
have different opinions etc. What's important is what they can legally do and
how incentives are structured. Giving monopoly to private equity and expecting
good things to happen is a joke.

------
gorgoiler
How can you let market economics mix with something as basic as where your
organization registers its name?

Perhaps private equity could also take control of oxygen supply? If prices get
out of control, perhaps the market will make other respirable gases available?

I’m sure I’ll regret writing something so emotive, but I really resent being
backed into what feels like could easily be labeled a loony-left corner on
this debate. Is this .org sell off an exercise in driving those who lean even
slightly towards moderately left economics into insanity, incapacitating them?

------
jobigoud
Whatever he thinks of Ethos or the statements they are making isn't relevant
anyway. It's a private firm, it can be itself bought and sold, acquired,
merged, etc.

What happens if Google or Facebook or whatever suddenly wants to control .org?
They just have to shell out a few millions?

------
jannemann
Interesting to see how people are bound to their selective perception if they
can somehow profit from it.

Ethos will squeeze every last drop out of this opportunity.

------
sys_64738
Sell to a private equity firm that tries to maximize profit from those assets.
Yeah, what couldn’t go wrong with that. At least this individual has admitted
liability for his part in this TLD’s forthcoming downfall.

------
dewey
I'm kind of amazed that this website
([http://www.circleid.com](http://www.circleid.com)) is not served via https
and even the login is posted to a http endpoint. There's even a redirect from
https to http.

You would think that "A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments" would
be on top of that.

~~~
sireat
Perhaps there is even a place to get a reasonably priced certificates. How
about free ones?

Richard, maybe you could suggest such a place? /s

Considering "the lady doth protest too much, methinks" tone of the post, the
inner conspiracy theorist in me starts to wonder if "Let's Encrypt" is as
benign in the long run as it seems.

------
kyranjamie
> limiting price increases to no more than 10% per year

Oh, well. That's okay then.

~~~
noneeeed
I.e. expect to see prices increase by 10% a year for the foreseeable future...

------
jaclaz
Out of curiosity, did anyone actually ask expressly Richard how he voted and
why he voted this way?

I mean, _escusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_(E)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_\(E\))

or "he who excuses himself, accuses himself"

------
bluesign
I hate this justification of doing bad stuff with ‘for the greater good’
excuse.

------
syshum
>>> the Registry Agreement for .org requires a 6-month notice period during
which domain owners can lock in a 10-year registration at pre-increase rates.
This should seriously discourage Ethos from doing this

Or the could announce a massive increase to get all the .org owners to
register for 10 years to give them a massive influx of capital right away,
then divest that capital in to some other venture, then sell PIR to someone
else. I am sure Verisign would love to buy it, or Donuts

the Internet Society can not stop them from off loading it in a couple of
years after they extract their money from the .org space.

------
Tharkun
So...how much does it cost to run gTLD these days? Perhaps the time is right
to set up a non-profit to run one at actually affordable prices, instead of
the current ripoff and the future .org price increases.

~~~
icebraining
You have to pay about $200k to ICANN just to submit a proposal for a new gTLD.

~~~
apple4ever
Because it costs so much to add a new gTLD /sarcasm

~~~
C1sc0cat
Its not cheap you have to commit to very high up times with massive redundancy
eg survive continent failure

~~~
55555
Does ICANN pay for that infra though or do you? Because if ICANN doesn't pay I
don't see how that's relevant.

~~~
C1sc0cat
No the registry does that for real TLD's - this isn't a vanity domain like
.sony

------
goombastic
Why change something that's working well? For profit, that's why. The author
is either dumb or invested.

------
jacobmalthouse7
SaveDotOrg.org is a great place to start following this issue. Lots of
nonprofits organizing to defend .org.

~~~
dang
I appreciate your concern for this issue, and to judge by
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677)
and the current thread it seems clear that most of HN agrees with your view.
But it's against the rules of this site to use it primarily for political
advocacy, which is probably why your comments are being flagged.

If you want to use HN in its intended spirit, you're welcome to! That's
described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
is summed up by the phrase intellectual curiosity.

~~~
jacob-malthouse
ok got it!

------
stefs
fair is fair, so i vote for selling .MIL and .GOV to a for-profit company.

brb, i'll make one. i promise not to hike prices too much (in the first year).

------
peterwwillis
I really don't like the internet and humanity in general for threads like
this. Calling a particular person names like navie, idiot, gaslighter,
corrupt, fool, greedy, insane, malicious, patsy, disingenuous, child,
disgusting, unethical, etc, the way people in this thread have, is never a
good thing.

It's really not cool when the target is a person. Receiving dozens of people
angrily accusing you of evil is upsetting, and can lead to fear, anxiety,
depression, and suicidal thoughts. I've seen people experience it. You may not
care about this person's welfare, but you should, if you want to be an ethical
human being.

It also doesn't help any idea you think you have, but it reinforces you
emotionally to believe it, even on the really rare chance that you _might_ not
have expert information, and are just reacting to your limited understanding
of a subject.

And it galvanizes opinions (your own, and of others) because of how the
emotion and anger is shared by so many people. It makes you believe all the
things people are saying, and you don't even stop to think critically. I know,
because I too have decided to agree with the crowd here before when they dog-
piled on others, only to find out the opinion everyone had (including my own)
was pitifully inaccurate. I later wanted to provide some correction, but good
luck fighting a mob when it wants to feel right.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Sorry, but no. He is not just a random guy off the street, he is in a
responsible public position, and this is already his defense, so it is
reasonable to think that this is the best he could come up with to defend his
decision, it's not some misinterpreted tweet that was taken out of context.

Also, I have not seen anyone advocating for hurting him, which would obviously
be out of place, but you can not take on the responsibility for a public good
worth billions and then expect exceedingly friendly treatment when you
completely fuck it up because you didn't care to exercise even a minimal
amount of diligence, in the best case.

And while "idiot" or "fool" might not be neutral terms, they are still terms
that at their core describe his actions in this case (assuming it wasn't
corruption), it's not just random name calling to degrade a person.

Now, if there really is an explanation how all of this is in the public
interest, sure, bring it forward, and push it to the front page of HN, I
certainly would want to know. But the mere fact that even the best-founded
judgement could always turn out to be completely wrong after all based on new
evidence is not a reason to hold back criticism when there is solid evidence
supporting that criticism, because the theoretical possibility does not mean
it is actually likely or common.

------
jacob-malthouse
ISOC CEO does not consider the public reaction or petition significant. He
stated that a mere 10,000 signatures when there are millions of .orgs
indicates lack of public concern or any serious opposition to the deal.

Ethos Capital paid $1.135 billion for total, unconditional, purchase of the
PIR from ISOC.

ISOC just "grabbed the opportunity when Ethos presented it,"

ISOC have reviewed Ethos’s governance plans and approved them, but will have
no means to enforce compliance with those plans.

The deal must be approved by the end of the 1st Quarter 2021 or it fails. The
exact date is still confidential.

It must be approved by two bodies – ICANN and the Pennsylvania Orphans Court,
which is a specialist court for estates and trusts.

The PIR is incorporated in Pennsylvania and this court must approve changes in
the PIR charter in order for Ethos Capital to take ownership.

This is because “the Orphans’ Court judge is the ultimate defender and
protector of the fund in question, and the Orphans’ Court will protect that
fund and ensure that the fund is distributed to the correct beneficiary”

There is a good introduction to this court at
[https://www.skhlaw.com/pennsylvania-orphans-court-101-all-
th...](https://www.skhlaw.com/pennsylvania-orphans-court-101-all-the-basics-
you-need-to-know-before-venturing-in/)

This means that if the Pennsylvania Orphans Court has not reached a
determination by 1st April next year, or if that decision is being challenged
in a manner which delays implementation, the deal fails.

------
driverdan
I'm surprised no one mentioned that Barnes works for Cisco:

> Richard Barnes is Chief Security Architect for Collaboration at Cisco

Cisco has had backdoored equipment and far too many security vulnerabilities.
They supply equipment to suppressive regimes like China, allowing these
countries to block, filter, and monitor internet traffic in an effort to
suppress human rights.

Someone who works for a company like that should not be trusted with important
decisions related to fundamental parts of the internet.

~~~
rasz
Up next "We are excited to announce Cisco acquisition of Let's Encrypt".

------
DoctorNick
Privatizing previously public services have always turned out badly. This will
be no different.

------
willgreen
This is nothing but the author attempting to justify his unethical decision to
himself. I hope he lives long enough to recognise, and potentially correct,
his mistake.

------
lovehashbrowns
The only thing I got out of that was "we want money." There's no real
justification for what they did. What's worse, and also condescending, is the
crap about taking Ethos at their word.

So let me get this straight; you typed out all these words to hide your real
intentions (you want money) and we're now supposed to trust you vouching for a
private equity firm? Please. Get the hell out of here. Put some more effort
into your schemes.

------
jellicle
I come away from reading that completely convinced that the decision to sell
.org will be a terrible one for internet users and .org name holders.

------
rocky1138
If the management of .org customers was as distracting as he claims (I believe
it), it would have been better to, instead of selling it, open up the
administration to bids where the private companies have to reach certain goals
and ensure certain provisions. If the management company can't do it or they
start breaking their contact, control reverts back to the Internet Society.

~~~
fanf2
PIR already outsourced the .org registry operations to Afilias years ago

------
whydoyoucare
It is not only naive, there is the classic "appeal to authority" fallacy in
the mix too! Someone wanted to badly do some damage control, which does not
seem to have achieved it purpose.

And yes, as someone stated, privaty equity companies want to make money from
their investments, believing anything else as their "goal" is utter foolish.

------
unexaminedlife
It's obvious the author and apparently their entire board didn't believe their
role was an important one.

In the end it sounds like whoever was doing the voting ended up putting the
wrong people in charge.

Would be useful to have a public reference listing the names of those who made
this vote so future non-profits don't make the same mistake.

------
christiansakai
This is the first time in many years on HN I see HN commenters commented
unequivocally 100% against the author.

------
jakeogh
Bad move: [https://www.economist.com/the-economist-
explains/2016/09/29/...](https://www.economist.com/the-economist-
explains/2016/09/29/why-is-america-giving-up-control-of-icann)

------
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
What a fucking moron!

1\. No, 26$ is obviously not a sane, let alone a reasonable price for a domain
registration. For comparison, you can register .de for < 4 EUR/year, so at a
price of 26$ this is redirecting 220 million dollars of funds that were
donated for charitable work to definitely not charitable profit for these
investors--or 160 million more than right now.

2\. The price increase is capped at _only_ 10% per year? Are you fucking
kidding me? Do you seriously not have a clue how exponential growth works?
.org has existed for 34 years, if you add another 34 years of increases of
"only" 10%, you are at 255$ per year. Or, as he himself calculated, it's more
than doubling the price in ten years, which would be just crazy.

3\. "They promised they'd be good!" ... seriously? You seriously can not see
the problem with a transaction where a profit-seeking entity obviously
explicitly avoids actually promising anything (that is: making any of those
"promises" legally binding)? After all, it is possible to actually promise all
those things in a meaningful way, that's what the legal system is for.

4\. "Give back to the .org community through a Community Enablement Fund" ...
or in other words: Appropriate charitable donations where the donors have
already decided what causes they should go to and redistribute them to their
liking. Can anyone really be too stupid to see through this and be in a
position to make such a decision?

5\. "While it's true that running .org provided a relatively steady income
stream, it effectively staked most of our revenue on a single business, and
required a certain amount of our resources to be spent managing that business,
distracting from the broader mission." ... WTF? And running it in the future
will not require any resources? Does this guy not understand basic financial
math either? Like, if you buy a business, you pay for expected profits, i.e.,
after you you have subtracted expected expenses, i.e., if you sell a business,
you still "pay" for all the future expenses? Selling a business does not
magically create money, it only shifts the cash flow to the present day. _The
only way selling a business can increase your cash flow is if the buyer
increases prices or reduces costs._

It's all so obviously from the bullshitting playbook you can hardly believe
anyone would actually believe any of these "arguments" to be of any value,
when the path to actually guaranteeing all of these things that we are
supposed to just believe is so obvious.

------
netfl0
Limit price increases to 10% a year!!?!??! Tone deaf AF.

I cannot believe someone actually wrote that down.

------
DoctorPenguin
Always remember that theese are the people in charge of running the internet.

I really hope he didn't have too much say in the important things at Let's
Encrypt. Because statements like this really damage the little trust I have
left in companys.

------
bogwog
So basically his two reasons are: “they gave us money, and I think they’re
worthy”

------
folio
Please, Barnes' "reasoning" is not naiveté. Barnes and his colleagues
understand exactly what they are doing. The Barnes article is evidence of
nothing but contempt for its intended audience.

------
tzs
I wonder what Network Solutions thinks of this? If you register a .org through
them, they offer 100 year registration for $999.

The registries do not allow a domain to be registered for more than 10 years
in the future, so the way NS implements this is by initially registering it
for 10 years for you, and then automatically registering an additional year
each year.

That only works out for NS if prices don't rise too much over the next 100
years.

I haven't read their terms to see if they have some sort of escape clause to
get out of the 100 year deal if prices rise too much.

~~~
miles
Some thoughts on Network Solutions' 100 year offer:

The 100 year domain: legal or not?
[https://www.tnl.net/blog/2004/03/23/the-100-year-domain-
lega...](https://www.tnl.net/blog/2004/03/23/the-100-year-domain-legal-or-
not/)

100-Year Domain Renewals?
[https://yro.slashdot.org/story/04/03/23/0235244/100-year-
dom...](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/04/03/23/0235244/100-year-domain-
renewals)

------
purple_ducks
Looks like OP is based in Washington D.C.

Guess he was feeling left out when it came to all the lobbying money and
croney corruption.

Strange he never addressed the fact that a new non-profit wasn't set up to
control the domain.

------
not2b
You can never take a corporation at its word. If you relied on promises that
you obtained (limits on price increases, etc) you should have gotten all of
that language into a legally binding contract. Even if current management of
Ethos is committed to what you say they promised, management changes,
companies run into trouble, and future management may come under pressure to
extract more revenue.

Also, what's the justification for 10% annual increases? Their costs aren't
going up faster than inflation.

------
timwaagh
There is a reason the author is on the board that gets to decide this. I wish
the relevant people would just pocket the money and book a plane ticket to an
offshore location, rather than bragging about it on social media. That way at
least some people other than the hedge fund would get something out of this
deal. I can understand simple corruption. I too need a fast-ish sportscar and
a decently sized mansion to fuel my habits. But this, I cannot understand at
all.

------
jiofih
Judging by the numbers, you can guess they sold for somewhere in the $100m-$1B
range. Hard to resist. And also known as corruption, when it comes to public
services.

------
tjpnz
If anyone believes Ethos will stick to increasing prices by no more than 10% a
year they're dreaming. This is a private equity firm, not a non-profit.

------
cannedslime
Hoping for "just" a 10% price hike annually is like hoping that a mugger just
steals your phone and wallet instead of stabbing you in the gut.

------
annoyingnoob
Renewing my .org domains now for as long as I can.

~~~
rinze
I just did the same. I'm with Dreamhost, and from the panel you can only do
that for 2 years, but if you contact them they'll let you do another 5
additional years.

------
DrScientist
Quick question - www.internetsociety.org - did you get a sweet heart deal or
are you on the same future track as everyone else?

------
musicale
This is nonsense; it ignores the huge conflicts of interest and the obvious
elephant in the room: nobody is going to pay a lot of money for something
unless they expect to get a lot of money out of it, and the only way to get a
lot of money out of .org is to extract it from the largely non-profit .org
domain holders.

------
C1sc0cat
A great pity that Poptels (Worker Coop) bid did not succeed over the internet
society.

I worked for one of the other bidders for .org as did Ivan Pope.

Don't suppose Billg or some altruistic rich people want to fund us to get the
Band back on the road :-)

Only Half Joking I am sure that Ivan And some of the Poptel team would be up
for it

------
rileytg
this is dystopian. is there anything we can do? i can’t think of anything...
government won’t help, the org which we trusted to protect .org is the one
screwing it, are we completely powerless?

if this battle is lost, what greedy move can they make next? how can we get
ahead of that now?

~~~
evross
Another post mentioned that this may be self-dealing. This comment they linked
has information on complaints/actions that can be taken:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21658324)

------
jacob-malthouse
If you want to complain to ICANN about the sale you can do it here:

[https://survey.clicktools.com/app/survey/response.jsp](https://survey.clicktools.com/app/survey/response.jsp)

------
M2Ys4U
I'm worried that somebody with staggering naivete like this is on the board of
Let's Encrypt as well.

I wonder if he'd have the same lack of qualms about selling that to a private
equity firm...

------
choiway
This article just makes matters worse. Saying nothing would have been better.
Not selling would have been the best.

This seriously falls in the "I didn't know you could do that category" for me.

------
iamleppert
“Limiting price increases to only 10% per year”

Let that sink in for a minute. In only 10 years, it’s going to cost 10x what
it does today to register A NAME.

Technology was supposed to prevent things like this, not enable it.

~~~
22c
Your math is off, but yeah. It's exponential growth.

------
slantedview
Giving a monopoly to a private company that is only interested in maximizing
profit will end badly. This is obvious. The author is deluding himself to
think any other outcome will happen.

------
wyclif
Anyone care to give an analysis of how this will affect small-timers who want
to register .org domains in the future in comparison to registering a
different top-level domain?

------
pbhjpbhj
"Hey guys, now we run the .org registry we're providing valuable security to
the registry users through synergistically responding to key realtime threats.
As such, in order to now return correct IP addresses _every_time_ we need
extra funding and so there is now a $100 security fee per 100k requests. But,
in keeping with our forthright policy to stimulate internet growth the domain
renewal fee is only 10% higher than last year. We're also freezing all
updating of equipment as it might introduce security vulnerabilities."

\-- new .org registry owners, next year, probably

------
glitcher
I would love to see the author do an AMA here and attempt to address all the
counter-arguments in this thread!

------
Kakadoo
Andre Sullivan of ISOC needs to resign. ISOC international needs to get
rebuild based on integrity and trust.

------
coleifer
Whatever man, this is straight up grimy and both parties disgust me.

------
Ericson2314
Happy Thanksgiving! Why do I have to wake up to this horseshit.

------
jawns
> So if we take Ethos at their word

It is unfortunate that we have a business culture where to take someone at
their word is not only naive but so reckless that the duped gets most of the
blame rather than the duper.

And yet, here we are. This is the reality. Taking a private equity firm "at
their word" is so foolish that it's hard to believe the author isn't being
disingenuous.

~~~
wpietri
Any lawyer in the world would have said, "No, Dickie, we don't just take
companies at their word once the money changes hands. That's what contracts
are for." At best this guy is incompetent, assuming his technical skills
magically transfer to being business skills. But like you, I have a hard time
thinking he believes any of this.

~~~
55555
Yeah, the idea that you would take a private equity firm "at their word" and
not require it in writing is laughable.

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mariuolo
This looks like a puff piece masquerading as blog entry.

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0x0aff374668
the author can't even be bothered to implement proper TLS/HTTPS on their
website (Mozilla blocks it)... and they voted for domain names?

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bachmeier
Is the 10% increase for _individual_ domains or _on average_? If it's on
average, that means those with the most valuable domain names can expect
increases of 300% or more soon...

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jijji
i would question how much money is this guy making on the backend from this
newly formed "ethos" corp... smells pretty rotten

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mcguire
"Because that is where the money is."

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musicale
> 10% per year

AKA doubling every 8 years.

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rinze
> If we take Ethos at their word

This guy must be new to this whole Crony Capitalism thing.

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Aeolun
Oh thank god! They said they would be good.

I’m glad there’s no recorded instances in history where that turned out to be
a patent lie.

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souterrain
> The Internet Society does great work protecting the Internet and bringing it
> to the people who need it most — work that is way more impactful than
> leasing domain names. This transaction secures that work's future and
> independence.

Is “lease” the understanding others have regarding the relationship among a
registrar and registrant?

Isn’t the registrar intended to operate the supporting infrastructure and no
more? Where does the concept of a “lease” enter the transaction?

~~~
ben509
You could own your name outright if you could take sole responsibility[1] for
resolving disputes. Basically, we'd have to have some scheme where everyone
can advertise which names they own, and then you'd negotiate directly with DNS
operators to convince them that your advertisment takes precedence over
someone else's.

So it could be done, it might even be a better scheme, but I think it would be
expensive and messy.

[1]: You could obviously pay someone to negotiate on your behalf, but you're
still initiating the action.

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TheMagicHorsey
How relevant is a TLD anymore? There are so many options. Most people seem to
use Google, and then after visiting the site, they use whatever the
autocomplete in their address bar is. Or, they use an app.

At least in India, I've seen most people doing this on their smartphones.
Nobody likes to type in the address bar anymore.

~~~
unreal37
Yes, this.

I don't get how anyone actually cares about a top level domain. There are so
many. Pick another.

~~~
goatinaboat
_I don 't get how anyone actually cares about a top level domain_

Do you even email, bro?

