Looking at the only two members of “Ethos Capital” (ironic name)
1) CEO: A Harvard MBA with typical PE experience
2) “Chief purpose officer” - Former SVP at ICANN responsible for corporate outreach.
The structure of this stinks. I’d be not at all surprised to learn of some kind of back channel dealing.
Edit: The former (2016) CEO of ICANN registered ethoscapital.com? After ICANN he went to the former PE firm of (1) above. He is certainly involved in this now, even if not named.
Unbelievable. This heist was planned for years with money raised specifically for it. I can’t believe this is legal.
I doubt that it is. The directors of a non-profit can't wake up one morning and decided to pillage the org's resources for their benefit. They must transact their business at arm's length. Chehadé buys Donuts from Nevett, Nevett turns around and sells dot-org to Chehadé's PE firm. This looks like a kickback scheme.
PIR is headquartered in Virginia, we should be calling and writing to the Attorney General there.
This is one of those situations that really encapsulates the essence of IP for me: There is something virtual (the .org tld) that comes with legally enforced scarcity and a monopoly that governs it. And some guys realize that you can acquire this monopoly cheaply, and milk it for massive profit, at the expense of millions of people. It's not even like there's some investment that needs to be done, some new fancy tech around tld's that need to be funded - it's just a plain as day money-grab, rent-seeking in its most obvious form.
My understanding is that running resolvers at the kind of scale they need to handle attacks is actually difficult and expensive. The registries themselves are just a couple of machines with databases on them.
Maintaining namespaces is just hard and the DNS, with groups of people running TLDs, is the best we’ve come up with so far. I personally thought namecoin was a creative alternative and I’m a little disappointed it hasn’t become more popular but until something like that does we’re going to continue seeing things like this.
Already in 2015, Emily Taylor warned [1] that ICANN could become the Internet's FIFA -- a small organization with great power that doesn't answer to any government. Here we are. A private company run by former ICANN people will be given the right to collect massive rent from a locked-in client base on a public resource.
It was already obvious in the 2000's the analogy with FIFFA is a good one as its the some of the playbook ICANT are using holding meetings in out of the way places and leveraging small countries to maintain power.
BTW I was a member of poptel who owned the .coop registry.
> Vint Cerf, former Chairman of the Board of ICANN and founding President of the Internet Society, said in a statement: “When the Internet Society won the bid to operate the .ORG registry, it enabled a productive and sustainable future for the organisation. Public Interest Registry exercised its stewardship to the benefit of the registrants and the Internet Society’s mission. I am looking forward to supporting Ethos Capital and PIR in any way I can as they continue to expand the utility of the .ORG top-level domain in creative and socially responsible ways.”
And then an outline of what "expand" might mean in that context:
> Going forward, PIR and Ethos Capital are planning to launch several new initiatives aimed at promoting and supporting the .ORG Community, including: Establishing a Stewardship Council that will serve to uphold PIR’s core founding values and provide support through a variety of community programs; Launching a Community Enablement Fund to support the financing of current and additional initiatives undertaken by key Internet organisations; and Expanding a program to award .ORG prizes to promote the success and positive impact of non-profit organisations.
Which is surely the most transparent flimflam imaginable and which anybody in the business world would interpret as doing absolutely nothing at all. /s I can't wait to see the fabulous prizes /s...
> and Expanding a program to award .ORG prizes to promote the success and positive impact of non-profit organisations.
WTF?
So, non-profits collect donations from people who want to support their respective missions, and now these scammers come along and want to use a monopoly to redistribute those donations based on what they think who the donations should go to, and then even want to be recognized for their "work" of forcing the redistribution of donations?
If there is one thing the .org registry could do to "promote the success and positive impact of non-profit organisations", then that would be to optimize their business as much as possible and offer the cheapest domain registrations on the market, so that non-profits can keep as much of their money as possible to spend on their core mission.
Even these bullshit "promises" would still be blatant corruption, you really have to wonder how much of a moron Vint Cerf is for not seeing that.
The "Privacy may actually be an anomaly", defender of Google's Project Maven, Google/Verizon "Wireless services are exempt from Net Neutrality" deal Vint Cerf?
It doesn’t really matter how benevolent the intentions of Ethos Capital are, the control of a public commons like .ORG has to be held to the highest standards.
With the amount of negative PR already generated by the proposed move, it’s hard to see a way forward for ICANN that is untainted.
It is not at all unlike what is captured by the phrase: justice has to be seen to be done.
> As of Saturday, October 1, the federal National Telecommunications and Information Administration no longer exercises control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
> Instead, as an autonomous not for profit organization, ICANN will now answer to international stakeholders across the internet community, including a governmental advisory committee, a technical committee, industry committee, internet users, and telecommunications experts.
> From its founding to the present, ICANN has been formally organized as a nonprofit corporation "for charitable and public purposes" under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law. It is managed by a 16-member board of directors composed of eight members selected by a nominating committee on which all the constituencies of ICANN are represented; six representatives of its Supporting Organizations, sub-groups that deal with specific sections of the policies under ICANN's purview; an at-large seat filled by an at-large organization; and the President / CEO, appointed by the board
> There are currently three supporting organizations: the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) deals with policy making on generic top-level domains (gTLDs); the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) deals with policy making on country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs); the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) deals with policy making on IP addresses.
So yes, the State Of California has jurisdiction but no control. AFAIK California has no power to intervene in the internal affairs of any corporation if they keep the law and while this whole thing stinks, I doubt it broke any laws.
It seems like this presents an opportunity to establish a decentralized alternative registry, initially populated with .org domains acquired prior to some reasonable point in the past.
Seize the means of registration. Seriously, why on earth are the domain registries of the world not in the hands of the people? This stuff is far to important to be under the control of cooperations.
You may want to look into OpenNIC, in which anyone with the know-how can operate a TLD.
They have domains like .geek, .cyb, .null, .libre, .oss, and you use them by simply switching your DNS server to one of OpenNIC's mirrors. They also support TLDs for "emerging nations" like .ku for Kurdish people, .uu for Uigurs, .ti for Tibet.
Though I'm not sure what would happen if ICANN decides to sell one of those domains one day.
As someone noted in a previous discussion, if governments get involved things will get messy, as just one example imagine China objecting to issuing/renewing a domain for a Taiwanese or Hong Kong NGO..
I don’t understand. Does this mean that my existing .org registration will likely become more expensive at any arbitrary rate, and I have to pay the high fees or lose it?
How do I stop this from occurring?
Typically endowment, programmatic expenses, and operational overhead are the big three. You might also see a reserve (emergency) fund or a capital campaign.
If you a interested, in the details of any given 501c3 look for the tax form “990”. It’s where the 501c3 report income, governance, and expenditure out to the IRS. Any nonprofit worth their salt will have a copy published on their website. They typically run 2, 3 years behind the calendar year, so right now expect 2017.
Nice to see this much interest; sadly it's not clear what to do. Thanks bhickey for the pointers below to the VA AG and IRS.
I'll try to keep that blog post up to date. Today: PIR posted an official response -- low on content, no additional redeeming tidbits.
https://www.keypointsabout.org/
Tellingly, they do not once mention the word "endowment" or derisking [for ISOC]... which seemed like the one plausible argument in favor of this move: ISOC sacrificing the public registry for the rest of its mission.
We the internet absolutely need a decentralized way to manage internet names that replaces the centralized ICANN. That is the only way to avoid these types of corruption.
ICANN is the biggest legalized mafia today! The domainers (just like Bitcoin junkies) are the worst human material. When it comes to domains, imagine yourself not paying your phone bill on time, and in 30 days it goes on an auction and your competitors buys it and routes all calls to their sales team - that's what GoDaddy and most registrars do today employed by the crooks at ICANN! This has to stop! Don't just stop at .org, wipe out all the assholes at ICANN!
Can someone put together a competitive bid and turn `.org` itself into a non-profit corporation? That sounds like the way to go in order to protect `.org` in the future.
My proposal: assign the management of the old core generic top-level domains to the United Nations. Raise the price to maybe $50 per domain. This will make domain hoarders/squatters unregister millions of domains. Use the money collected for the benefit of mankind (earmark the money).
Then you've effectively made it impossible for certain people to buy a domain name. And I wouldn't really trust that UN would be the best beneficiary of such money, it's bureaucratic hell.
Some kind of price scale would work well to allow individuals easy assess while discouraging hoarding. E.g
First domain $3/yr
Second $8/yr
Third $20/yr
...etc
No idea how you could track/enforce this. Make domains tied to an individual or company type thing. Shelf companies would add too much cost to have one per few domains I imagine.
Your proposal against what? I don't see how your proposal solves any problems relevant to the article, unless extorting money from domain holders is exactly what you want. The most obvious solution to the discussed problem would be to not raise prices and hold those at ICANN, ISOC, PIR, etc. to account.
This outcome is worse than any of the 'worst-case' scenarios hypothesized by the ICA when they filed their open letter of complaint in May when the price cap was listed. In hindsight, why would ICANN classify .org (with its enormous base and community) the way it does new TLDs?
Would ICANN have any recourse if, after allowing this sale, the established registry dramatically raised prices?
We need a NameCoin rewrite, preferably based on Algorand (for energy efficiency). And perhaps a rent-oriented namespace instead of a buying oriented one. If a sybil-free system can be erected, every host would be renting namespace from the public, as it is a burden for the public to have to memorize more complicated strings for their actual favourite sites.
[+] [-] et2o|6 years ago|reply
1) CEO: A Harvard MBA with typical PE experience
2) “Chief purpose officer” - Former SVP at ICANN responsible for corporate outreach.
The structure of this stinks. I’d be not at all surprised to learn of some kind of back channel dealing.
Edit: The former (2016) CEO of ICANN registered ethoscapital.com? After ICANN he went to the former PE firm of (1) above. He is certainly involved in this now, even if not named.
Unbelievable. This heist was planned for years with money raised specifically for it. I can’t believe this is legal.
[+] [-] bhickey|6 years ago|reply
I doubt that it is. The directors of a non-profit can't wake up one morning and decided to pillage the org's resources for their benefit. They must transact their business at arm's length. Chehadé buys Donuts from Nevett, Nevett turns around and sells dot-org to Chehadé's PE firm. This looks like a kickback scheme.
PIR is headquartered in Virginia, we should be calling and writing to the Attorney General there.
[+] [-] im3w1l|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] m12k|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] swiley|6 years ago|reply
Maintaining namespaces is just hard and the DNS, with groups of people running TLDs, is the best we’ve come up with so far. I personally thought namecoin was a creative alternative and I’m a little disappointed it hasn’t become more popular but until something like that does we’re going to continue seeing things like this.
[+] [-] tszyn|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/21/icann-int...
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|6 years ago|reply
BTW I was a member of poptel who owned the .coop registry.
[+] [-] scandox|6 years ago|reply
> Vint Cerf, former Chairman of the Board of ICANN and founding President of the Internet Society, said in a statement: “When the Internet Society won the bid to operate the .ORG registry, it enabled a productive and sustainable future for the organisation. Public Interest Registry exercised its stewardship to the benefit of the registrants and the Internet Society’s mission. I am looking forward to supporting Ethos Capital and PIR in any way I can as they continue to expand the utility of the .ORG top-level domain in creative and socially responsible ways.”
And then an outline of what "expand" might mean in that context:
> Going forward, PIR and Ethos Capital are planning to launch several new initiatives aimed at promoting and supporting the .ORG Community, including: Establishing a Stewardship Council that will serve to uphold PIR’s core founding values and provide support through a variety of community programs; Launching a Community Enablement Fund to support the financing of current and additional initiatives undertaken by key Internet organisations; and Expanding a program to award .ORG prizes to promote the success and positive impact of non-profit organisations.
Which is surely the most transparent flimflam imaginable and which anybody in the business world would interpret as doing absolutely nothing at all. /s I can't wait to see the fabulous prizes /s...
[1] http://www.domainpulse.com/2019/11/14/pir-eyeing-growth-etho...
[+] [-] zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC|6 years ago|reply
WTF?
So, non-profits collect donations from people who want to support their respective missions, and now these scammers come along and want to use a monopoly to redistribute those donations based on what they think who the donations should go to, and then even want to be recognized for their "work" of forcing the redistribution of donations?
If there is one thing the .org registry could do to "promote the success and positive impact of non-profit organisations", then that would be to optimize their business as much as possible and offer the cheapest domain registrations on the market, so that non-profits can keep as much of their money as possible to spend on their core mission.
Even these bullshit "promises" would still be blatant corruption, you really have to wonder how much of a moron Vint Cerf is for not seeing that.
[+] [-] 0x0|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gorgoiler|6 years ago|reply
With the amount of negative PR already generated by the proposed move, it’s hard to see a way forward for ICANN that is untainted.
It is not at all unlike what is captured by the phrase: justice has to be seen to be done.
[+] [-] Svip|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chx|6 years ago|reply
> As of Saturday, October 1, the federal National Telecommunications and Information Administration no longer exercises control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
> Instead, as an autonomous not for profit organization, ICANN will now answer to international stakeholders across the internet community, including a governmental advisory committee, a technical committee, industry committee, internet users, and telecommunications experts.
According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN
> From its founding to the present, ICANN has been formally organized as a nonprofit corporation "for charitable and public purposes" under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law. It is managed by a 16-member board of directors composed of eight members selected by a nominating committee on which all the constituencies of ICANN are represented; six representatives of its Supporting Organizations, sub-groups that deal with specific sections of the policies under ICANN's purview; an at-large seat filled by an at-large organization; and the President / CEO, appointed by the board
> There are currently three supporting organizations: the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) deals with policy making on generic top-level domains (gTLDs); the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) deals with policy making on country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs); the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) deals with policy making on IP addresses.
So yes, the State Of California has jurisdiction but no control. AFAIK California has no power to intervene in the internal affairs of any corporation if they keep the law and while this whole thing stinks, I doubt it broke any laws.
[+] [-] consp|6 years ago|reply
Apparently it is under Californian State law so US law.
[+] [-] rch|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feistypharit|6 years ago|reply
1. Dot org 2. Dot net 3. Dot com 4. The world!
Dot org will only be the testing ground and only the beginning if they pull it off.
[+] [-] SXX|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pojntfx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] input_sh|6 years ago|reply
They have domains like .geek, .cyb, .null, .libre, .oss, and you use them by simply switching your DNS server to one of OpenNIC's mirrors. They also support TLDs for "emerging nations" like .ku for Kurdish people, .uu for Uigurs, .ti for Tibet.
Though I'm not sure what would happen if ICANN decides to sell one of those domains one day.
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasengan|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.handshake.org
[+] [-] dpau|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rebuilder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajani|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobigoud|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcurious|6 years ago|reply
If you a interested, in the details of any given 501c3 look for the tax form “990”. It’s where the 501c3 report income, governance, and expenditure out to the IRS. Any nonprofit worth their salt will have a copy published on their website. They typically run 2, 3 years behind the calendar year, so right now expect 2017.
Example 990: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/icann-fy-2017-fo...
[+] [-] blaser-waffle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metasj|6 years ago|reply
I'll try to keep that blog post up to date. Today: PIR posted an official response -- low on content, no additional redeeming tidbits. https://www.keypointsabout.org/
Tellingly, they do not once mention the word "endowment" or derisking [for ISOC]... which seemed like the one plausible argument in favor of this move: ISOC sacrificing the public registry for the rest of its mission.
[+] [-] GrumpyNl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tszyn|6 years ago|reply
Write to news outlets. If this blows up in the mainstream media, public pressure may be too high for them to go ahead with this deal.
[+] [-] bitxbitxbitcoin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikolay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewstuart|6 years ago|reply
Maybe a broader look at corruption within ICANN is needed.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JimWestergren|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vegardx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gustomaximus|6 years ago|reply
First domain $3/yr Second $8/yr Third $20/yr ...etc
No idea how you could track/enforce this. Make domains tied to an individual or company type thing. Shelf companies would add too much cost to have one per few domains I imagine.
[+] [-] soraminazuki|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syshum|6 years ago|reply
the price for domains should remain cheap, for many reasons, not the least of which one should not be gate keeping.
Second, nothing should be in the control of the UN, they are a terrible corrupt organization that should have as small amount of power as possible.
[+] [-] zingola|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metasj|6 years ago|reply
Would ICANN have any recourse if, after allowing this sale, the established registry dramatically raised prices?
[+] [-] DoctorOetker|6 years ago|reply