Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

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Ownership is a nebulous concept with many interpretations. I'm guessing your referring to private property (from a capitalist interpretation) as "the traditional sense", in which case domain names are fairly similar: once you acquire the domain, it's reserved for you as long as you pay your dues (just like property taxes for land). If you don't, it will be put back on the market for other people to enjoy.

To be clear, i'm not saying it's a good thing. I don't think we should be able to publish anything (read: pedonazi propaganda) and have it uncensorable, but i certainly believe DNS is not the layer where you want to apply regulation/censorship, as it's not hosting any content and disrupting a domain name can result in many other domains (from other, potentially legit users) becoming unavailable. That's why we have legal responsibility for hosts and you contact the host to get content taken down.

I'd be curious what a DNS coop would look like. I was excited about the .org coop being setup due to the sellout scandal, unfortunately the nefarious deal was canceled so the coop was buried alive. It would be great to cut the middlepersons for commercial names, as well as mutualize domains to share free delegations from such as afraid.org, eu.org, or netlib.re is doing.

>Ownership is a nebulous concept with many interpretations.

Impersonation is a simple concept.

> it's reserved for you as long as you pay your dues (just like property taxes for land). If you don't, it will be put back on the market for other people to enjoy.

No, rent is not tax.

That's debatable, but in all cases domain name fees is certainly not "rent" in the traditional sense. At least most registries cannot by law/contract take your domain away from you as long as you keep paying your dues. Of course the same applies for rent depending on your local housing regulations: the difference is you cannot undergo serious modifications in an apartment you rent, but you can modify whatever you want in your domain zone. In that sense, domain names are closer to "ownership" than to "rent".

Moreover, as was previously mentioned, domain name fees were previously introduced as administrative fees, not rent. It's a very modern invention that domains should be a profitable field.

> That's debatable,

No, not really, it's just definitionally false.

> A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or national),[2] and tax compliance refers to policy actions and individual behaviour aimed at ensuring that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax at the right time and securing the correct tax allowances and tax reliefs.[3] The first known taxation took place in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC.[4] A failure to pay in a timely manner (non-compliance), along with evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent.

> At least most registries cannot by law/contract take your domain away from you as long as you keep paying your dues

Any contract can be written that way and none of them are tax.

> At least most registries cannot by law/contract take your domain away from you as long as you keep paying your dues

Aren't there situations where it ends up being hard for a landlord to take their appartment away from the tenant?

Rent was never mentioned? They said property taxes, where, in owning a house, you must pay property tax to benefit from the the services, courts, and military defenses of the country you live in - and if you don't pay, the country still has to protect that piece of land anyways, so they take it from you for non-payment and/or deprive you of other freedoms by throwing you in jail so that someone else can own the land and pay taxes on it.

> Ownership is a nebulous concept with many interpretations

It may have become that, but was it always that way, though?

I grew up being pretty clear on the distinction between purchasing a book in a bookshop and borrowing a book from the school or public library.

> I grew up being pretty clear on the distinction between purchasing a book in a bookshop and borrowing a book from the school or public library.

Very good point that proves "ownership" means different things: private property under capitalism is different from a common/public property such as a book from a library. For most of history, land was not "owned" by anyone. See also "enclosure of the commons" for some reading on the topic.

Use-based "ownership" (personal belongings) is not "private property" (a religious belief that prevents people from using a resource that could benefit them such as empty dwellings), and is not "collective property" (shared resource managed by a community), and is not "public domain" (shared abundant resources such as air or water in some regions). All of these approaches can be considered forms of ownership/property, but they vary wildly in principles and applications.

Even capitalistic authors (e.g. Adam Smith) distinguish land ownership and capital ownership. So the fact that land ownership had special status in history does not say much about 'regular' private property.

There is no practical difference between personal property and private property. If i have lathe in my workshop that i use just for hobby purposes, then it is personal property. If i started business, put that lathe in that business and use it for work, then it is private property / capital. But in both cases it is the same lathe that someone has to produce, someone has to pay for it, someone has to maintain it and can be bought and sold on open market.

If you buy a M8 Bolt or a pair of plain black socks, you are free to do whatever you want with it, sell photos of it, make copies etc. The same can’t exactly be said about the book you purchased (in most legislations where the concept of intellectual property exist).

Does that mean that you don’t own the book?

Ownership is not so clear cut.

You own that copy of the book, you do not own the copyright (the right to copy) for the book

Intellectual property makes sense to us because it's existed for our whole lives. I think it would surprise someone who'd never heard of it. If I were told I own a pogo stick but not its "bounceright", I'd be as confused as this hypothetical person.

Well yeah, cause that would be kinda silly haha. I think a comparable thing would be if there was a concept of readright for books (I guess there is, piracy exists, but it's more focused on the copying side of things than unauthorised reading)

You still get value from reading the book. You get no value from a pogo-free pogo stick

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