Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed

The sale of one of the internet’s most popular registries to a private equity firm has revived concerns over how the domain name system is governed. At the end of last week, the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that it has sold the rights to the .org registry for an undisclosed sum to a private equity company called Ethos …

[Not Enough Coffee]

Thanks for the great article. I don't think this amount of detail will be provided elsewhere.

[Arthur the cat]

Thanks to El Reg

When they first warned us of the possibility of .org domains suffering rip off prices my sole .org domain was up for renewal, so I went for the maximum 10 years. I wonder what the next renewal will cost me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look on the (sort of) bright side

Unrestrained greed coupled with unrestrained Capitalism results in the frogs jumping out of the pot before they are cooked.

[Max Vernon]

Icann?, more like TheyCann

Apparently ICANN can, and apparently will screw over whoever they like. Time for them to be reigned in.

[Mage]

Icann

Why are they in charge?

What do they actually do to protect users and the "Internet"? Or do they exist to maximise the return for big corporations?

It stinks.

[JohnFen]

Re: Icann

It's very useful to have some single authority that allocates names and addresses. Otherwise it can get prohibitively difficult to avoid two people trying to use the same ones.

That said, the current situation with ICANN is utterly ridiculous and is failing us. Some alternative would be nice -- preferably one that is more resistant to corruption than what we have now.

[Charles 9]

Re: Icann

Resistant to corruption? HAH! It's a Work of Man.

[JohnFen]

Re: Icann

That's why I said "resistant to" and not "immune from".

[Angelaina2014]

Re: Icann

Thanks for your one-sentence thesis on everything that's wrong. You've added scintillating details and depth to this formerly hopeless conversation. Please keep playing that harp, and that dead horse over there, flog on it more, too.

[Charles 9]

Re: Icann

Thank you (in all honesty). You made my very point by your response. Does "OK Boomer" ring a bell?

Sometimes, less is more because the context of those words convey more than the words, kinda like how a picture is worth a thousand words.

The point is, Man is imperfect and prone to corruption. Thus, anything issued by man is imperfect and prone to corruption. This includes any attempts to correct the corruption that naturally results from our initial attempts. "It's a Work of Man" means it's always going to go to pot. That's how we are, sadly. Thus why no civilization on earth has lasted for very long.

And BTW, if it isn't immune, it's hopeless. Corruption of this manner is like the start of an avalanche: it starts small, yes, but it can use that small start to grow rapidly until it might as well have been tainted from the start. That's how it tends to work in reality: starts small, eventually becomes too big.

[TRT]

This stinks.

Stinks to high heaven. Corruption, that's what it is. Pure corruption.

And greed. Greed and corruption.

[DarkRud]

Only IP?

Sooner or later, domain name information will change to pure IP denominations. It's nice if you still have exclusive IP4 addresses - stupid if you have several domains on one IP.

[Milton]

Greed is gooood

Except of course, greed is not and never has been "good".

Everywhere you look throughout the whole of human history, you see that greed is destructive. Ultimately it is self-destructive of its practitioners, but before that point, so much damage is done to so many people. Whether it's greed for power or greed for treasure, the human race may not survive unless it finds a way to inoculate itself against this mental and emotional scourge.

[JohnFen]

Re: Greed is gooood

Indeed.

One of the ideas behind western capitalism is the recognition of this fact, and to mitigate it by performing a bit of jiu-jitsu so that the greedy option is also the least damaging, most beneficial to the public actions.

I think the track record on this is spotty at best.

[Charles 9]

Re: Greed is gooood

I think what we've learned is that true cheating is like yoga: it can twist and contort itself to fit any purpose. This defeats capitalist jiu-jitsu by being able to twist like a snake and and up twisting capitalism with it, with a side of deluding the exhausted public along the way (recently read a web comic called "The One Rich Guy" and I'm told some of the blurbs in it were actually spoken).

[teknopaul]

domain name swapping

Search engines should introduce a feature to domain name map from a .org to any other address at the request of the current domain owner so that everyone can migrate off .org asap.

It no longer represents a non-profit organisation so having .org no longer has value.

DNS registries could support the same feature for MX forwarding.

DNS over HTTPS can do the same thing.

They should make the mapping permanent, or for a very long time, so that the old .org domain that is no longer being paid for, is essentially worthless to any new customer.

Could then add migrated domains to blacklists that search engines maintain so these crooks cant even sell the .orgs to domain squatters.

[John Tserkezis]

Oh Crap

That is all.

[Bernard]

Much more important than the question of who the buyer is

Is the question of who profited from the sale.

The fact that it's worth buying means that more revenue can be squeezed from it. Private equity motives are transparent and, for better or worse, part of the free market economy.

The private sale of assets which have presented themselves as public or quasi-public is a very different thing. It's what enriched the Russian oligarchs and the relations of corrupt regimes the world over.

If the proceeds go into some other not-for-profit research and development to further the goals the .org org started, then there may be an argument to be had.

Assuming private citizens pocketed the profits of a public sale, they should be hunted down and investigated for corruption.

[DerekCurrie]

Corporatocracy + Idiocracy = Insanitocracy

Lunatics with money to burn in pursuit of further lunacy. <-The future hates you.

[JacobMalthouse]

24 nonprofits have launched a letter writing campaign in opposition to the sale.

You can read the letter and sign up to voice your concerns at:

www.savedotorg.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a certain .org site that has been quite a thorn in a certain industry's side that originally used .org before doing some domain hopping for a while before going back to .org again.

It really wouldn't surprise me if this site would now disappear when .org is sold to a for-profit company.

[kathygump]

All Hail! "The Public Interest is dead. Long live the Public Interest."