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Comment by eclipsetheworld | Hacker News Reader

The .io TLD is owned by Ethos Capital. The same private equity company that tried to buy the .org TLD a while ago. Go figure...

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From their website:

"OUR ETHOS Drive prosperity for all stakeholders

We believe that long-term success is best accomplished through a thriving ecosystem in which prosperity is shared amongst all stakeholders." [1]

Bullshit, they exist to squeeze every little penny left in a company out and then dump the hollowed out remains on the stock market to die.

[1] https://ethoscapital.com/about-us/

Well they obviously mean that those 'stakeholders' are their shareholders.

The stake that is held is driven through the heart of the company.

I think it's pretty sad how the rights for this get sold around, but the territory to which it belongs gets little to no revenue from domain sales.

There's an ongoing complaint seeking repatriation of the domain, and I really hope I'm wrong in speculating that nothing will be done about it.

Man, that is early-Web levels of sordid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io#History

FYI, apparently this is the current state of UN affairs: https://www.lexpress.mu/node/388292 (previous and recent decisions referenced)

I’m always mind-boggled at the level of acceptance in the industry of clear misuse of ccTLDs. Is having “input/output” in your domain really so cute that it’s worth tying your entire business to an incorrect ccTLD? Especially when we have so many new cute, built-for-purpose geek-cred gTLDs like .dev.

It’s much worse than that. The Chagosian islanders who lived in this territory were all exiled by the British to make room for a military base on their land. They have been fighting in the legal system for decades just for the right to go home.

Ethos later acquired a controlling interest in Donuts (Jan 2021), who acquired Afilias (Nov 2020), who is the service provider for the .org TLD. The "operator" is still the Public Internet Registry, but from my understanding Ethos now controls the company that effectively runs the .org infrastructure.

Wasn't it owned by Internet Computer Bureau (ICB)?

Regardless, the British government profited off of the .io domain while it rightfully belonged to the Chagossians of British Indian Ocean Territory.

https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-...

As far as I can tell, the British government has officially claimed not to have been paid anything from the .io registrar.

Despite the registrar claiming it deposited some amount into accounts for each territorial party they were ostensibly operating on the behalf of.

So, someone's lying.

Ethos Capital has a mortgage operation. My experience with them lead me to the conclusion that their name does not imply "ethical".

The sunnier the name, the darker the reality.

Cerberus Capital have entered the chat...

The inverse of this doesn’t hold unfortunately. Blackwater sounded like a load of bad guys and behaved like it too.

What is scary is that Ethos Capital is made up entirely of ICANN affiliates. In other words, these are the same people that govern our domain names.

Pretty fucked up if you ask me. They are also going around buying up basically every major TLD.

Lease with ICANN and be subject to their price gouging forever or own with Handshake, the only thing ICANN is afraid of [1], and never pay again.

[1] https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/buyer-beware-not-all-...

Handshake, what's that? Oh, I see... blockchain... "Handshake coin (HNS)"... PoW... the way you're plugging it, I thought it had that kind of smell.

Oh, excuse me. I thought that smell was Ethos Capital.

It’s possibly worth noting that this is through Afilias, who seem to operate at least eleven other countries’ registries, including Australia’s (.au), and such of the older-but-not-original gTLDs as .info and .aero.

https://afilias.info/ has a list.

This seems to be to be a fairly rotten space, with power tending to consolidate around parties that have acted in fairly demonstrable bad faith.

Irony Capital should hostilely buyout Ethos capital to complete the joke

According to their website, they do not own .io

https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/top-level-domain-portfolio...

https://ethoscapital.com/portfolio/ Afilias does

IANA has it as Internet Computer Bureau Ltd [0], which was bought by Afilias in 2017 [1] and is operated as a subsidiary, and Afilias itself was bought by Donuts in 2020 [2], and Ethos Capital acquired a controlling interest in Donuts in 2021 [3].

So it's accurate to say that ICB (inasmuch as it exists) operates .io, as a subsidiary of Afilias, a Donuts company, controlled by Ethos Capital.

Simple!

[0] https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/io.html

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Computer_Bureau

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afilias

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donuts_(company)

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