.ORG Isn’t Broken, and We Don’t Need Private Equity to ‘Fix’ It | Hacker News Reader

.ORG Isn’t Broken, and We Don’t Need Private Equity to ‘Fix’ It

eff.org

94 pointsnotRobot14 comments

I don't understand why ICANN needed to remove the price cap for .org in the first place.

PIR is a non profit and they can clearly waste millions given their 'investments'. Now they want to get rid of the (increasingly) lucrative property they were set up to manage in the first place?

I wonder if ethos would be so interested if the price caps still existed, and they would otherwise take 10+ years to recoup their investment?

Its clearly corruption.

Does anyone else feel that it was just a matter of time before such corruption would take place simply because there are people in power?

As they say, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely," and ICANN has absolute power over internet names.

It makes a good case for a non-human-involved way of managing the DNS root zone.

There are some new attempts at creating DNS roots that aren’t managed by centralized organizations. Handshake.org is aiming to create a distributed root of trust for the DNS root and it’s been getting traction in certain circles.

There were some not very convincing arguments such as a low price making it easy for cybersquatters and for criminals to use throwaway domains.

> Its clearly corruption.

You are going overboard and using hyperbole with a statement like that. (And clearly? Seriously...)

> I wonder if ethos would be so interested if the price caps still existed

Price caps do exist. It's called the market. And non-profits can pay an increase in price just like they do when they buy every other thing they use (even trash can liners from Amazon).

Plenty of costs go up year after year and even if competition are impractical to switch vendors or sources. Nothing about a non-profit makes it so super special that it should have some special status.

One very important last thing. Trivial now for a non-profit to lock in 10 years of registration at the existing rate and then worry later about what happens.

I love the way this is always being poised as 'poor non profits feel sorry for them they are on a good mission they get special treatment and some kind of pass'.

Take a look at the money pissed away (all on file publicly) and then come back and tell me how bad it would be if the domain was $15 instead of $10 etc.

Ethos Capital is comprised of ex ICANN staff, and have tight commercials relationships with people actively running PIR.

Coincidentely the price caps disappear by ICANN ruling and suddenly Ethos Capital is formed to buy a property from PIR - an organisation that was specifically set up to care for .org.

You seem to be confused about this whole situation. We arent talking about a registrar - we are talking about the registry. There is no market pressure affecting the price of a .org from the registry, so there is no "price cap". PIR is an NGO and they are happily cash-positive, so there is no direct reason for them to increase the prices.

It is only in Ethos interests that the price would be increased. Its literally a license to print money. They have even just announced that they would cap price increases to 10% a year for 8 years. That means that within 8 years the price would be over 2x what it is now, and after that, they can set it to whatever they like.

I dont get your rant about NGOs pissing money away. If you mean PIR, I already mentioned that they are happily cash-positive, and certainly waste money on stuff outside their remit.

No-one really cares about $10 vs $15 - which is kind of the whole point. This whole situation has come into existence for Ethos to be able to make a "generous-looking" 1 billion investment with guaranteed return within 6-7 years without even increasing the number of domains sold.

So yeah, its clearly corruption. There is no viable reason for PIR to sell .org. If they want 1 billion they should just raise the price caps 10% a year and in 6-7 years they will have it by doing nothing, and still have .org.

Has anyone looked into Ethos Capital? According to LinkedIn, they have a founder and two other employees -- one analyst and one associate (in India). There is another Ethos Capital in the Los Angeles area, but I can't determine if there's any relation. Typically PE shops with >$1 billion in AUM (assets under management) would have several analysts and associates to do due diligence before deals. Less than 40% of funds have >$1 billion AUM. [1] It's especially rare for a fund to start with such a large amount unless there's a prominent founder. A MD from a relatively unknown PE shop with $2B AUM doesn't qualify. As someone who interned in PE last summer, Ethos seems very odd to me.

EDIT: Looking into it more and they list a "Chief Purpose Officer" on their website.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ZiV1bDeNk

Basically everyone publicly announced who's at Ethos is or used to be at ICANN or PIR in some capacity. You don't need that much due diligence when you already know exactly what's happening there because you were there a few months ago in a ruling capacity.

Yes, but it's still rare to get $1B for your first fund. Firms usually have a big deal or two planned to attract LPs. This was likely the case here. Would be interesting to see if someone can figure out who their LPs are.

It is already the case where regional or local DNS do not have the same content. For example in most EU countries, the local DNS do not resolve sci-hub.

Probably a silly question: Is is possible to setup an independent DNS from the "official one", where registering or renewing a .org domain would be possible?

If Internet is regulated by a not-for-profit, and not by laws or regulations, it seems to me that would be perfectly legal?

Any comment or suggestion?

Its certainly posssoble but convincing all internet users to use your alternative DNS is difficult.

Why would Wikipedia.org register on your DNS if most US users will not get their new address as they're pointed to the Ethos DNS by default by their ISP.

See projects like https://www.opennic.org/ for a DNS alternative.

> Is is possible to setup an independent DNS from the "official one", where registering or renewing a .org domain would be possible?

Yes, it's entirely possible. It's not even very difficult. I am part of a small group who owns and operates a "private internet", and while we don't currently operate a DNS for it, we are adding one this year.

That catch, of course, is that your own DNS infrastructure is separate and distinct from the "real" internet DNS infrastructure.

A private internet sounds incredible! I'm fascinated by the idea.

It's actually pretty easy to do. Calling it a "private internet" is a bit grandiose -- it's really a WAN that uses TCP/IP and adheres to most RFCs.

For our communications infrastructure, we tunnel through the real internet, have a couple of modems for dialup, and have a microwave link to connect up a remote area that lacks reliable internet service. We pay for that by running a tiny little ISP that sells (real) internet service to the neighbors there.

The network is used by about 15 people (excluding the ISP customers, as they're segregated from our WAN).

Since we started this up about 10 years ago, we've become aware that there are a ton of other groups doing similar things. I wonder if someday all of these "alternate internets" will combine to form a larger one...

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