Save .ORG from Arbitrary Censorship by Halting the Private Equity Buy-Out | Hacker News Reader

Save .ORG from Arbitrary Censorship by Halting the Private Equity Buy-Out

eff.org

83 pointsnayuki9 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677

I'm very curious to know what Wikipedia's position on the sale is, esp. given they will be directly affected.

Jimmy?

How will Wikipedia be directly affected? Do you mean they have a .org domain? Even if the cost goes up significantly, given their other expenses I doubt even a few thousand dollars a year would matter much to them.

The article emphasized the problem of censorship, not price. Some relevant quotes:

> Registries have the power to suspend domain names, or even transfer them to other Internet users, subject to their contracts with ICANN. When a domain name is suspended, all of the Internet resources that use that name are disrupted, including websites, email addresses, and apps. That power lets registries exert influence over speech on the Internet in much the same way that social networks, search engines, and other well-placed intermediaries can do.

> As the new operator of .ORG, Ethos Capital would have the ability to engage in these and other forms of censorship. It could enforce any limitations on nonprofits’ speech, including selective enforcement of particular national laws.

> Since many NGOs are engaged in speech that seeks to hold governments and industry to account, those powerful interests have every incentive to buy the cooperation of a well-placed intermediary, including an Ethos-owned PIR.

Thank you. I didn't read the article, I made unwarranted assumptions from the previous postings on this subject and then made a mis-informed HN comment having not read the article. Mea culpa.

This is a very serious concern. Many web sites ended up censoring themselves at the whims of advertisers. All it takes is a little pressure from the people with money: "I don't like this .org web site and I can't associate with a registrar that allows it to exist".

isn't ICANN known to be a very corrupt organization? I m not sure i want DNS to be saved, i d rather it be replaced with something distributed like ens

ENS has its own issues. For example, sometimes government and law enforcement oversight of DNS is a good thing, especially in the context of malware. In my experience, for every sensational account of abuse, there are dozens or perhaps hundreds of cases in which the centralized nature of DNS is used for good (in a manner that isn't controversial). There are also cases like trademark disputes; those are definitely a lot more controversial, but there's definitely an argument to be made that allowing someone other than Google to purchase goolge.anything (intentional typo) is probably going to cause more harm than good.

If we want to replace DNS, we're going to need a system that's both resistant to abuse and fixes the problems with DNS in its current form. Every proposal I've seen, including ENS, just swaps out existing problems for new problems.

If you’re trying to solve malware at the DNS level, you’ve already lost. In this particular case, it’s far more likely that keeping the state out of DNS management is a good idea. A stronger argument is trademark infringement and consumer protection, but even this does not seem worth dealing with a human arbiter.

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