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The controversial proposed sale of the .org internet registry to an unknown private equity firm will hit a critical decision point this week, and all the organizations in charge are refusing to talk about it.
On December 9, DNS overseer ICANN put a temporary halt on the sale by sending a letter to the organization that runs the .org registry, PIR, as well as its parent company, ISOC aka the Internet Society, demanding greater transparency over the sale to Ethos Capital as well as answers to a series of questions asked by the wider internet community.
That response is due this week and a response has apparently been sent but no one – not ICANN, ISOC, PIR or Ethos – will talk about it. We still don't even have a list of the questions ICANN claims it asked.
"PIR has submitted responses to ICANN's request for additional information pertaining to the transaction with Ethos Capital, LLC," ISOC told us, having asked PIR on our behalf. "PIR is working with ICANN to release its original notice regarding the contemplated change of control and information it provided in response to ICANN's subsequent request. This information will be released in the coming days pursuant to the principles set forth in ICANN's Documentary Information Disclosure Policy."
We approached ICANN, pointing out that this response clearly indicates active discussions between the organizations as well as decisions being made on the basis of ICANN policies, and asked for comment. ICANN told us a day later that it wouldn't comment.
In the meantime, a group of internet pioneers and former ICANNers – including its first chair Esther Dyson and former CEO Mike Roberts – have said they are setting up a new non-profit organization that they propose take over the .org registry in order to continue to run it as a non-profit, rather than convert to a for-profit corporation, as the Ethos Capital deal indicated.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @04:23PM (1 child)
If they want to kill the golden goose, there's nothing stopping people from creating an alternative method of finding sites by human memorable names. The biggest restriction currently is that many people don't have static IP addresses and with IPv6, that should no longer be the case for people that don't want dynamic addressing.
It's just a matter of time before people start creating their alternative methods as between the profit motivated landgrabs, the governments' seizing domain names for things they don't approve of and the limitations of domain names, we will get an alternative.
I remember when I first got online, ring sites were relatively common. They were nothing more than a set of related websites that would link each other into a ring. A website that just lists addresses with memorable names could be set up to act similarly to a DNS server without much trouble. And, I have no doubts that something that's more sophisticated could be worked out, such as alternate DNS servers that specifically route to names outside of the current system.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:12AM
Search engines are pretty much there for many people. They are probably vaguely aware of domain names, but don't really use them. They just go to Google - or whatever they have set for search, type the name of the site they want to go to, and follow the first link. The actual domain name isn't something they pay attention to. In that sense they really are using a human memorable name to find the website.