
Private Equity Is Going to Ruin the .Org Domain System and Screw Nonprofits - elorant
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nvjd/private-equity-is-going-to-ruin-the-org-domain-system-and-screw-nonprofits
======
phantom_oracle
As difficult as it will be for Americans to accept, this whole scenario:

\- ICANN lifting price-caps on .org \- Connection between private equity firm
and owners of .org \- Sale of the .org to private equity firm

Reeks of corruption.

It made me question my decision to purchase future .org domains. I considered
it a stable alternative to .com with a larger option of available "premium"
names.

~~~
delfinom
Sadly, the corruption will only get worse from here on out. They no longer are
under oversight of the US Government which while doesn't mean too much, it did
at least add some intimidation to prevent doing funny business.

~~~
tialaramex
Because do-nothing is an acceptable outcome for a body like ICANN (whereas for
example it's a huge problem for the US Senate) it would be fine IMNSHO if
ICANN had been given to the relevant specialized agency of the United Nations,
the ITU.

The ITU is a slow unwieldy bureaucracy, each member is a UN Member State, ie
an entire country - which means nothing will get done, which is fine and I
argue largely desirable.

------
dharma1
[https://domainnamewire.com/2019/11/13/breaking-private-
equit...](https://domainnamewire.com/2019/11/13/breaking-private-equity-
company-acquires-org-registry/)

"Ethos Capital is a new private equity firm lead by Erik Brooks. Brooks was at
Abry Partners until earlier this year. Abry Partners acquired Donuts and
installed former ICANN President of Global Domains Akram Atallah in the top
spot there.

Donuts co-founder Jon Nevett left to be CEO of Public Interest Registry.

The other person at Ethos is former ICANN Senior Vice President Abusitta-Ouri.

Ethos appears to have just been founded. It acquired the domain name
EthosCapital.com at the end of October through Afternic.

[Update: The firm might be tied to former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé as well.]"

------
karl11
Sounds like there should probably be multiple ICAAN organizations. They have
been a relatively benevolent monopoly but that is unlikely to continue
forever.

------
hellofunk
Are there other top level domains that are at risk of this? What are the most
stable ones?

~~~
tialaramex
The ccTLDs are ultimately controlled by the sovereign entity whose country
code is represented. So you could make the usual rule-of-law arguments in
favour of a variety of stable industrialised economies, the same way you would
for where you'd house the legal entity for an international business.

But I don't see any indication that .org is likely to go away, they just
intend to hike prices to make a nice profit, and that's totally inside the
rule-of-law so there's no particular reason to think that, say, Canada,
wouldn't do just the same if it saw the opportunity.

~~~
thechao
Maybe someone could explain this to me: aren't non-ccTLDs controlled by
_consensus_? If some asshat decides to jack the prices of *.orgs, why can't
the majors (Google, MSFT, ...) just point to another DNS?

~~~
throw0101a
> _If some asshat decides to jack the prices of .orgs, why can 't the majors
> (Google, MSFT, ...) just point to another DNS?_

When you go to "www.example.org", you are really going to "www.example.org.".
The extra period at the end is subtle, but important.

The path of a DNS query is "." -> "org" -> "example" -> "www". Before a DNS
client can lookup "example.org", it has to know where the DNS servers for the
"org" TLD are, and it gets those values from the root domain servers, ".".

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_root_zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_root_zone)

So how does a DNS client know how to find root domain servers? It's
bootstrapped manually. Every DNS server has a static file that contains the
values:

* [https://www.internic.net/domain/named.root](https://www.internic.net/domain/named.root)

Once it contacts the root servers, a DNS server can then fetch the pointers to
all the TLD and ccTLD name servers:

* [https://www.internic.net/domain/root.zone](https://www.internic.net/domain/root.zone)

* [https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db](https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db)

There is no practical way for anyone to change the "." -> "org" pointers. You
can do it on your own server, but you can't force anyone else to.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> You can do it on your own server, but you can't force anyone else to.

That's exactly what thechao meant by 'consensus'. If we all agree to configure
our computers to fail to resolve all domains ending with `.org`, there's no
longer really a .org TLD.

Google could probably pull it off. Imagine if .org domains failed to resolve
in Chrome, or resolved but triggered an ad banner saying _This website is
supporting an institution which is undermining the web, for profit._ Not the
kind of activism we'd realistically expect from Google, but they have enormous
power over the web. Throw in cooperation from the other browser vendors, and
you can kill .org pretty dead.

Unsanctioned DNS shenanigans aren't just hypothetical. Alternative DNS
universes have long been a thing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root)

------
vortico
Has .org always followed market prices? If so, this change shouldn't have much
effect on the .org prices. If not, why hasn't the previous manager of .org
been following market prices?

~~~
tialaramex
Historically .org had price caps. As the article explains, while PIR was
sizing up to sell this they arranged for the price caps to be lifted by ICANN.
They insisted at the time they had "No plans" to raise prices. And I'm sure if
you were to dig into documents you'd find that's technically true, with "plan
for selling to private equity firm" being the next topic on the agenda after
"Announce we have no plans to raise prices".

~~~
ohashi
Or we aren't raising them, they are.

------
sunstone
So happy I have zero .org domains.

------
klohto
Can the title be any more exaggerated? Yes, it's bad but all the article is
doing is making up assumptions.

------
ReptileMan
Sensationalism at its best. Any non profit that cannot shell a couple of bucks
for domain will have hard time doing anything of value anyway. Now it costs
12$, even quadrupling it to 50$ won't change anything.

~~~
buttscicles
I've seen registrars selling certain desirable domains at a premium. What if a
non-profit's domain is suddenly considered premium and they want to charge
thousands of dollars to renew? It becomes a ransom that you must pay in order
to keep access to your email inbox, and everything that comes along with that.

