
ICANN Delays .ORG Sale Approval - watchdogtimer
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/org-update
======
jmccorm
I can't tell if ICANN is trying to publicly clear their own name of any
wrongdoing, or if all the added attention has woken them up to how seriously
flawed this whole ordeal was (which either by policy or procedure they managed
to miss) or both. None of those answers are satisfying. Here's hoping they do
the right thing and kill the sale... but even then, I'd be concerned they'd
restructure the deal and try again.

I thought ICANN was supposed to be the good guys? You know, the responsible
managers of the Internet and providing solid governance which serves as the
best argument against any kind of government intrusion? I'm hoping they didn't
just grow bored with it and decide to get rid of it. As though it was some
sort of dearly loved Google service with mild profitability and little-to-no
opportunity for internal career development. ;)

~~~
gruez
>I thought ICANN was supposed to be the good guys?

You could say that about every government, yet there's widespread corruption
in most (or all) countries[1]. There's even corruption in democratic
governments that are directly accountable to their citizens every few years
(via elections). Given the way the ICANN board is appointed is... indirect at
best, thinking that ICANN are the "good guys" is wishful thinking at best.

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

~~~
arcticbull
To be clear are you suggesting the private sector would do a better job
managing this? After all, we're _criticizing_ their transfer of the TLD to the
private sector. They can't be both the hero and the villain in the same story
can they? Surely I'm missing something?

At least the goal of the public sector is to serve the public whereas the goal
of the private sector is to serve the interests of there shareholders.

If this was a private company on both sides wouldn't we just be hailing it as
a big win for shareholders and/or demanding the government step in and
intervene?

~~~
michaelt
There are some people who think when it comes to DNS ICANN should basically be
frozen - no new gTLDs, no wildcard DNS, no supporting domain name seizure, no
price or policy changes, and so on. Just delegating to each TLD's providers,
and maybe some policing of providers' behaviour.

If you believe that, _hypothetically_ the best choice would be some sort of
private nonprofit, independent of the government but bound to inaction by
charter.

Whether being directly controlled by government would be an improvement is
somewhat debatable - would lawmakers be reasonably hands-off, like they are
with things like GPS and NIST time services? Or would the opportunity to block
pornhub/piratebay/wikileaks prove irresistible?

~~~
thaumasiotes
What's the problem supposed to be with new TLDs?

~~~
michaelt
You can read more at [1] - in short, critics of the new gTLDs would argue
that:

1\. It doesn't deliver the claimed increase the supply of domain names, as no-
one would build a business or brand on whatever.info without securing
whatever.com

2\. It _does_ shake down domain registrants for cash - if you already own
whatever.com you'd better get whatever.info and whatever.sucks before someone
else squats them.

3\. These factors mean .info domains and suchlike are a stereotype of sketchy
sites, which is a negative feedback loop.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ICANN&oldid=93014...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ICANN&oldid=930148901#TLD_expansion)

------
jzl
If ISOC hadn't removed the .org price restrictions, I feel like this could
have been defensible. Farm out the management but hold the new stewards under
a strict leash, fine. (Of course it wouldn't have gone for $1B+ in that case.)
But coupling it with the unrestricted price increases is just indefensibly
corrupt and hopefully illegal given that ISOC was never intended to profit
from .org in the first place.

------
wmf
The people behind this deal are ICANN insiders who know the rules intimately;
in some cases they may have written the rules. It's hard to imagine that ICANN
won't approve the deal.

~~~
ardy42
> The people behind this deal are ICANN insiders who know the rules
> intimately; in some cases they may have written the rules. It's hard to
> imagine that ICANN won't approve the deal.

If that's the case, maybe the US government needs to reclaim authority over
ICANN, which it had until a few years ago, and assert that authority to
reverse this decision. There needs to be some kind of effective oversight.

~~~
AsyncAwait
The majority of people don't live in the U.S. Why should the U.S. government
hold such control? If the argument is that they invented the internet, (hardly
entirely accurate), they certainly didn't invent the World Wide Web.

I don't even agree with them having .gov, them regaining .org would be a
disaster.

If anything, some sort of multi-national, strictly non-profit charity should
be setup for this, or if not, the U.N. as a last resort.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> Why should the U.S. government hold such control?

Because they did until _very_ recently.

> If anything, some sort of multi-national, strictly non-profit charity should
> be setup for this, or if not, the U.N. as a last resort.

That would take _literally years_ , and would be too-little, too-late to deal
with these shenanigans around the .org TLD.

~~~
AsyncAwait
> Because they did until very recently.

That's not an argument. Any regressive policy could and has been justified in
those terms.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> That's not an argument. Any regressive policy could and has been justified
> in those terms.

Yes, it is. The US government has an institutional history of overseeing
ICAAN, so it's the most practical organization to take on that role on short
notice.

I think you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Your preferred
multi-national solution would likely take years to negotiate, which means it's
not really even a solution at all, as far as .org is concerned.

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reitzensteinm
The only sane outcome is clawing back .org from PIR, regardless of what they
intend to do with it now. They've shown themselves to be bad stewards that
view it as purely monetizable asset.

I doubt the will would be there even if it were legal. But one can dream.

------
jdkee
This continuing privatization of public goods is unconscionable and the
leadership of ICANN should be held to account.

~~~
ohashi
They've been held to... bank account. This is being done by ICANN insiders and
there is no accountability mechanisms at ICANN. The organization is captured.
The .ORG contract renewal wasn't even looked at by the board, it was handled
by staff. It was pointed out letting staff do it avoids oversight mechanisms
(coincidence? probably not). The board oversight group also all had to recuse
themselves to the point there wasn't enough people to perform any actual
oversight. ICANN is a captured and corrupt organization. Very few people who
aren't being compensated to be there spend any time it seems, thus registry
interests win.

------
3xblah
"Public announcements by PIR, ISOC and Ethos Capital contain relevant facts
that were not required in the request for approval."

What facts?

Why were those facts not required?

Sounds like under the system in place there is little due diligence expected
to be done by ICANN before a decision is made -- none of these public facts
were "required", let alone anything non-public.

At least we know someone is reading the public announcements.

------
echelon
The `.or` tld isn't taken.

1\. Create a non-profit to buy `.or` as a new gTLD. Legally carter it so that
the stakeholders are distributed and it can never be taken private.

2\. Pre-reserve `.or` domains for all existing `.org` domains.

Optional:

3\. Give free lifetime registration to any org stakeholder that redirects
their domain to the `.or` version and/or displays a banner about PIR's
malfeasance.

4\. Any new `.org` registrants are barred from registering a `.or`

5\. Buy back `.org` when it becomes worthless and give it back to the
stakeholders.

~~~
ReverseCold
I know it's a joke, but two letter domains are reserved for countries :)

~~~
tialaramex
In practice it would be possible, if it was extraordinarily thought to be
worthwhile, for ICANN to agree with the relevant UN group that this code
should never be issued. The UK code is not available but is "extraordinarily
reserved" and so it doesn't cause a conflict. EU is also reserved even though
the European Union certainly isn't a country.

~~~
NickNameNick
.uk is functional. Did you mean .gb ?

~~~
Symbiote
UK is not the ISO code for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland, the code is GB.

.gb and .uk are both functional, and .uk as a top-level domain is exceptional.

EU is also not an ISO code, but has been reserved, and is also a TLD as .eu.

~~~
M2Ys4U
>EU is also not an ISO code, but has been reserved, and is also a TLD as .eu.

`eu` is also exceptionally reserved in the ISO database, which is enough for
ICANN.

The ISO states in their FAQ:

"You can use EU for the name European Union. Please note that this is not an
official ISO 3166-1 country code. The European Union is not a country but
rather an organization. As such it is not eligible to be formally included in
ISO 3166-1. Recognizing, however, that many users of ISO 3166-1 have a
practical need to encode that name the ISO 3166/MA reserved the two-letter
combination EU for the purpose of identifying the European Union within the
framework of ISO 3166-1."

------
joshuaellinger
Their site supports public comments and, for all the noise, I see all of three
comments up there right now. Go comment.

~~~
glitcher
Those are very thoughtful and informative comments as well.

------
jzl
_" On 14 November 2019, PIR formally notified ICANN of the proposed
transaction. Under the .ORG Registry Agreement, PIR must obtain ICANN’s prior
approval before any transaction that would result in a change of control of
the registry operator. Typically, similar requests to ICANN are confidential;
we asked PIR for permission to publish the notification and they declined our
request."_

Unbelievable. The brazenness of this heist continues out in the open.

------
will_pseudonym
For someone who isn't super familiar with the details, on a scale of 0 to
IOC/FIFA, how corrupt is ICANN?

~~~
ohashi
FIFA level

------
vt240
Has anyone looked at PIR's 990 Forms and has knowledge of business operations
in the sector. It looks like from their expense sheet PIR contracts all of the
actual management of the their TLDs to Afilias. What is the breakdown of
responsibility here? What does PIR actually do?

~~~
toast0
PIR chooses and supervises the contractor that runs the TLD. I don't know if
maybe, once upon a time, PIR ran the TLD itself, and then decided to contract
it out.

It's not an unreasonable thing to contract out. Afilias runs multiple TLDs,
and there are many operational things that would have a cost benefit from
sharing; for example, running the anycast network of authoritative servers in
as many points of presence as possible --- each PoP requires capital
investment and time investment to setup and run, but servicing additional load
may be possible at a much smaller marginal cost.

------
jumelles
I really hope this isn't too little too late. The sale should be stopped.

------
fierarul
ICANN is just trying to calm down the riot. This won't end well until there's
some formal investigation from the US government.

------
aib
This might be the 3rd-worlder in me talking, but I kinda want the sale to
happen so a better DNS system can rise from its ashes.

------
mobilemidget
Anybody know of large .org sites that reconsidered or perhaps already have
changed their URL(s)?

I do hear from contacts .org are more often not renewed when prompted for
yearly fee, I did not either for my shelved .org domains.

------
floor_
Its cool that my $13 domain is now worth >$750.

------
BucketSort
We should have a peer-to-peer DNS driven by some consensus system like
blockchain. Why do we allow critical pieces of internet infrastructure to be
centralized?

~~~
jrockway
There is no mandate to trust the root DNS servers. Someone like Google
(8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) could just start registering their own .org
domain names and nobody could stop them.

The resulting shitstorm would be so enjoyable to watch.

~~~
Thorrez
Previously the CEO of Cloudflare has been against making 1.1.1.1 return
anything non-standard, because even a single instance of that would ruin the
integrity of DNS.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19829033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19829033)

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, that's a very reasonable stance. I'm not saying it's a good idea to
hijack .org, just that it's more possible than one might think.

