Private Equity company acquires .org registry | Hacker News Reader

Private Equity company acquires .org registry

domainnamewire.com

300 pointsbhartzer69 comments

This is very troubling. I can't imagine why this would be done if they had good intentions. Makes me want to check their financials.

Here's their most recent public tax forms which includes revenue, executive pay, board member info, and more

PIR: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/331...

ICANN: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/fy18-irs-tax-for...

Looks like they're paid quite generously.

We should support public goods like the Ethereum Name Service https://ens.domains/

You can register a domain at https://app.ens.domains/

alternative DNS roots have been a thing for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

OpenNIC has been up for almost 20 years now: https://www.opennic.org/

Very - I recall around 2000 the registry .coop I worked for was one of the bidders for .org back then.

There where some very sketchy bidders one of whom seemed to want to convert to be for only a narrow US specific definition of non profit, The Red Cross would have been bared from having a .org for example.

There is a reason that ICANT is hated by a lot of those who have to deal with it.

I work at Namecheap and we've been vocal about ICANN's decision to lift .org price caps. Happy to answer any questions from an industry-insider perspective.

P.S. Only upvoting for exposure, not endorsing the acquisition.

Worst case,

1. How does this affect renewals in the near future and further down the line for select companies and more generally?

2. How does this affect new registrations in the near future and more generally?

3. Why are newer tlds more expensive for specific domain names?

4. How do we prevent these registries from becoming overpowered landlords?

The registries control the costs for us so with no price caps, .org (which sets the precedent for .com) could increase the prices on new registrations and renewals as much as they want basically.

The only thing we can do is continue to be vocal as partners and consumers: https://www.namecheap.com/blog/ensuring-icann-keep-domain-pr...

Are there any TLDs where the management are elected by the domain holders ? The real world analogy I can think is HOA where the association (body corporate) is run by trustees/directors who are elected by the property owners. The association is incorporated as a non profit.

.onion

No there is no registry "coop" afaik but this would be very cool. Maybe in the next round of TLD applications?

Unrelated, any news on .Web?

No news at all, not even for us as registrars.

ICANN has made several decisions in past that are mind-boggling and definitely not in public good. I wonder who runs this org? How someone gets into leadership in there? It surprises me to no end that we are being forced to pay $$ perpetually just to add a little record in their database. There should be nearly no cost to this and over the time I've become very certain that there is quite a bit of bribery going on in ICANN who approve raising prices instead of slashing them. What are the avenues to legally disrupt/expose/fix ICANN?

I only have a couple domains at namecheap, but maybe this question applies to all registrars.

If I renew all my domains to the ICANN max of 10 years, can they retroactively charge me for time paid if the price increases?

Some may note that some registrars allow for more than 10 years, but that assumes the registrar remains solvent, as the max is 10 years.

Does anyone know what policy at ICANN justifies this action? My understanding was that certain TLDs are historically non-commercial and this free from commercial constraints on registration.

Adding to this, does anyone know if there is a procedure in place to submit a protest of an ICANN decision? There has to be a way for the public to issue a request for re-evaluation, right?

Definitely a case of capital being earned and not a power differential being used to rip off the public writ large /sarcasm

How...is this even allowed? Do people like us not get any say in this?

Fuck the ICANN.

To be fair, you seem to be quite explicit.

Yes because I feel like I was fucked with. Of course I'm mad.

Especially if they remove the pricing protections it might price me out of owning my own domain.

Indeed. ICANN has lost nearly all my trust for the past couple of years.

PE firm appoints former ICANN executives to top positions. ICANN lifts price caps on .org registry. PE firm acquires .org registry. ICANN executives acquire stakes in PE firm.

I don't know how this kind of behaviour is qualified legally. Probably something like "free market capitalism". But on a personal level this feels just disgusting and corrupt. Things like the .org registry that are unique and as such cannot be subject to competition should be controlled by a public entity in the common interest. I say that as a long-time owner (or rather renter) of a personal .org domain.

I feel that's something the EFF could sue against

Well, that’s the end of .org. Private equity just wants to collect rent, they’ll raise prices year after year just because.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, it's the truth.

Rent seeking is a disease that stifles progress. I don't understand how the same people who rail against overly aggressive patent, DRM, and copyright protections can justify supporting rent seeking in the physical world.

Time to fork ICANN. We knew this day would come, it is time for a DNS schism.

There's no absolute law that icann will always be the one true registry. It's mostly convention, inertia, and an expectation that they won't try to pull any shenanigans. But I'm seeing an awful lot of shenanigans lately...

Remember when the browser vendors decided to make an example out of Symmantec by revoking their root CA after repeated bad behavior?

At the end of the day, it's a bunch of private equity weenies who paid a lot of money for a piece of paper, vs. the engineers who actually control which piece of paper everyone's computer looks at.

We'd have to be willing to stare down a lot of angry people, but we could absolutely win this fight if we really wanted to.

What’s the most equitable TLD for now, and for the future?

.onion

.sucks

That’s actually a pretty interesting example — is this some sort of stick-it-to-the-man anti-corporation performance art?

“[...] lawyers are infuriated that the dot-sucks registry was charging trademark holders $2500 for domains and everyone else $10.“

“The .sucks domain registrar has been described as "predatory, exploitive and coercive" by the Intellectual Property Constituency that advises the ICANN board. When the .sucks registry announced their pricing model, "most brand owners were upset and felt like they were being penalized by having to pay more to protect their brands." Because of the low utility of the ".sucks" domain, most fees come from "Brand Protection" customers registering their trademarks to prevent domains being registered.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN#.sucks_domain

It feels like many of the new TLDs are a shakedown on brands to force them to land-grab their trademarks. At least .SUCKS is honest about it?

EDIT: oh my, this is juicy! Some real internet counter culture. This excerpt from a letter of complaint from the .SUCKS registry to ICANN:

“[...] ICANN appears concerned that registrations on the .SUCKS registry will be used to aggregate uncomplimentary commentary about companies and products--the very purpose for the registry that Vox Populi identified in the application it submitted to ICANN, and that ICANN approved.”

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20150511_vox_populi_registry_s...

EDIT2: I am reminded of some more domain history here, regarding Diageo seizing the Guinness-Sucks.com domain names (also a nice blast from the past: who remembers the Your Rights Online section of SlashDot?)

https://m.slashdot.org/story/14513

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d200...

The idea that the expansion of TLDs, sold as some sort of democratization of domain names, was anything other than a money grab is a joke. It's exemplified by ".sucks" forcing trademark owners being extorted to pay to protect their brand. As soon as ".sucks" is played out financially, look for ".isshit", ".killsbabies", ".molestspets", etc., etc., to spring up to monetize hedging haters.

.eth, the Ethereum Name System. https://ens.domains/

You can register an ENS domain here https://app.ens.domains/

ENS is mature, but the tld is not yet wired into dns. For now there is a bridge of *.eth.link, eg. https://almonit.eth.link/, see https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/ethdns-9d56298f...

Yikes. F This.

"ICANN made this deal much more valuable by removing all price controls on .org."

Just thinking of all the Non Profits who have .Org and are going to get conned out of fees in the name of capitalism. Obviously making price increase assumptions here but this sucks. Is there anyway to stop this?

Doubt it. Looks like a done deal. I think either the government or a collective of citizens would have to sue on antitrust grounds, which seems reasonable considering they control the entire .org TLD. But other than that, don't see much of a way.

And considering it was controlled entirely by a single entity before, nothing has really changed except the structure of the entity (profit vs non-profit). Technically speaking, I don't think there is a requirement to prove consumer harm from antitrust activity, but I could be wrong. Which would, in theory, make such a case easier to win. Someone who knows a lot more than me on this once told me that requirement was left out of the antitrust laws because it was difficult to prove and there doesn't actually need to be harm to the consumer for their to be harm in general (meaning at least to other competitors). For example, a company can subsidize losses in one line of business with profits from another and keep prices reasonable/competitive in both areas while simultaneously stifling competition in the line of business that's losing money. Consumers still receive a good price but the harm is to the competition, which will cause company bankruptcies down the line and have longer term consequences. It also creates a barrier to entry for any prospective competitors. I think this was the real-world scenario that was used to leave out a requirement of proof of consumer harm. In fact, I also believe they don't even have to technically succeed they just need to merely attempt to monopolize something to be guilty of a felony. But again, since it's just changing hands from one entity to another, that might not fly.

Imagine if they raise prices exponentially for organizations they don't like, imagine if like the aclu or eef can't renew their .org because those organizations run counter to their interests.

That's an apocalyptic scenario and not one likely to survive legal challenge. But if something like that were to happen, then I'd say that there is still a workaround. I forget the name of the browser extension but there is definitely something that exists that circumvents domain blocking by storing the domain to IP list. I believe this is/was used mostly in the UK to get around their governmental laws blocking certain sites so if you had a link to www.blockedsite.com/article it would take www.blockedsite.com and replace with the known IP address and route you there directly instead.

> not one likely to survive legal challenge

Can you elaborate?

I mean if they really did that there would likely be numerous paths to successfully sue the private equity company now controlling the .org TLD. Basic consumer protection laws require, for example, that buyers of like kind be charged the same price. I think that law applies to physical goods and commodities, but there is an argument to be made that domain registration is not as much of a service as it is a commodity loaning program. Another avenue could potentially be predatory pricing and price gouging laws. IANAL but I'm sure there are many, many things they could cite in a civil suit to stop such blatant ripoff schemes. In fact, I think if they did gouge them so obviously and in such a targeted fashion, it would probably be a great case for getting them torn apart under antitrust law since there is literally nowhere else you can register a .org TLD.

They could maybe add a mandatory arbitration agreement for future domain renewals? And then do this.

One could only hope that ICANN is one of the organisations so targeted.

I don't think this will be the non-profits who will see the biggest impact for this. Any move against them will result in pure ill will towards the new owners.

Instead, it will be the Amazons and Googles. The ones who are big enough, with big enough wallets to want to prevent typo squatting.

Of course, with Google owning a number of TLDs, perhaps it's not that inequitable... /s

Yes, there is. Legislation on the national level, or an international treaty + ratification.

And yes, that would trample on the "sanctity" of private property somewhat.

TLDs aren't private property, they're a concession by ICANN.

fuck you ICANN.

Does this mean non profit organizations will end up paying more for domain names? That seems sketchy.

On an unrelated note, I've been dying for .sea TLD for a long time now (for Southeast-Asia). Reckon many unicorns wanting to appear "regional" would love this too.

Unfortunately, it's owned by the Principality of Sealand... an offshore platform.

Why?

These regional vanity TLD's don't have are real day to day use

Time to wind down all the .org domains of more than trivial import.

First thought: Sketchy.

Second thought: Actually I hope that they do raise prices. Sucks for the squatters and the legacy owners, but the squatters more so given how many more names they own.

Squatting can be dealt with differently, if there was the will for doing so. You don't need a scythe to pluck a leaf.

I'm increasingly unconvinced that anything but an economic incentive like this can. Like the risk this appears to present anyway.

As an aside I love that expression, I have not heard it before and it's great.

Preventing squatting is a fundamentally unsolved problem which I'm afraid can't be just "dealt with differently". If you want to allow anyone to own any domain and treat domain as personal property then squatting is actually unsolvable. Various possible measures necessarily limit freedom either by raising prices or quantity or property rights (i.e. transferability or usage). If you have any other ideas, please do let everyone know.

> Second thought: Actually I hope that they do raise prices.

Can't wait for that price hike for my ~VIP~ 3-letter dot org domain that I've been actively using for 11 years!

That's kind of the thing though, I want one as well. If you didn't get one 11 years ago you have been out of luck since then.

So? Should only people who can afford high costs be allowed to own three-letter domains? Worthiness is not defined by income.

I agree! Especially when it comes to dot org. The thought was more about how first one there gets to keep it forever because it's cheap enough to hold out doesn't feel great either.

As long as they're actively using it, I don't see the problem. If someone is squatting on a domain without using it, that's a different problem and should be handled in a way that doesn't punish legitimate users.

When you ask HN about Bay Area housing, the fact rent/tax was low when you moved in doesn’t justify freezing it now...

I don't want it, I need it - it's used for my main email address, my main website and generally all of my online identity. I don't even care that it's 3 characters.

I don't understand why all of a sudden I should be in a bidding war with much richer entities than me over what has essentially become part of my life.

I wonder what JWZ thinks of this

Oh so this will affect squatters and not so much non profits?

So I've been trying to buy my-name.org for years, but it's held by some domain squatter. No idea where or why they are holding it and paying for renewals for at least the last 15 years.

Maybe now they'll think it's cost-prohibitive?

It expires next year, any idea on how to buy a domain these days?

Doesn't Craigslist have an .org as well?

Is there a reason any domain has to be in private hands? Other than allowing more rent-seeking.

I believe that technically generic top level domains "belong" to ICANN, and the registry operators (who collect most of the money) are just contractors operating the infrastructure on behalf of ICANN. So PIR doesn't actually own .org, ICANN could find a new contractor if they abuse their power.

Of course, that's in theory. In reality ICANN's contracts are very controversial, and there have been plenty of accusations of corruption.

Honestly, I don't see why the GTLDs couldn't be operated by a non-profit. They could charge as much as necessary to maintain the extremely high availability the service requires without needing to enrich any shareholders.

Time to sunset it.

And remove it from the email whitelist.

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