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posted by martyb on Friday November 15 2019, @04:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-to-do-now? dept.

Public Interest Registry, the non-profit organization managing the .ORG Top Level Domain (TLD) has been sold to investment firm Ethos Capital.

PIR was established by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage and operate the .ORG domain. Since then, .ORG has risen to become the largest purpose-driven domain used by millions of organizations and others to achieve their online goals.

[...]“This is an important and exciting development for both the Internet Society and Public Interest Registry,” said Andrew Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Society, the organization that established Public Interest Registry. “This transaction will provide the Internet Society with an endowment of sustainable funding and the resources to advance our mission on a broader scale as we continue our work to make the Internet more open, accessible and secure – for everyone.

Obviously this comes as a complete and utter surprise to everybody, a couple of months after ICANN eliminated the .org price cap despite overwhelming opposition.

All of PIR’s domain operations and educational initiatives will continue, and there will be no disruption of service or support to the .ORG Community or other generic top-level domains operated by the organization.

It looks like all parties involved wisely decided not to comment on any expected price increases though.


Original Submission

Related Stories

ICANN Eliminates .org Price Cap Despite Overwhelming Opposition 10 comments

ICANN eliminates .org domain price caps despite lopsided opposition

Earlier this year, ICANN sought public comment on a new contract for the Public Interest Registry, the non-profit organization that administers the .org top-level domain. The results were stark. More than 3,200 individuals and organizations submitted comments to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and most of them focused on a proposal to remove a cap on the price customers could be charged for .org domains.

The existing contract, signed in 2013, banned the Public Interest Registry from charging more than $8.25 per domain. It allowed annual price increases of no more than 10 percent. Registrars can add their own fees on top of this base amount, but competition among registrars helps keep those added fees down.

According to one tally, 3,252 comments supported keeping the price cap. Another 57 comments didn't express an opinion on this issue one way or the other. Only six supported higher prices. Of those, one was filed by a former executive at Verisign, a for-profit company that administers the .com domain that might want to raise its own prices in the future. Another was from a lobbying organization that counts Verisign as a member. A third appeared to be voicing support only sarcastically.

To sum up, fewer than 0.07 percent of commenters thought it would be a good idea to remove the price cap on .org domains, while more than 98 percent opposed the change. But on Sunday, as the old contract was about to expire, ICANN approved a new contract without a price cap.


Original Submission

Internet Society Says Opportunity to Sell .org TLD to Private Equity Biz Came Out of the Blue 31 comments

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Internet Society says opportunity to sell .org to private equity biz for $1.14bn came out of the blue. Wow, really?

Analysis The price tag for one of the internet's largest and most important domain-name registries has finally been revealed: $1.135bn.

That is how much unknown private equity company Ethos Capital, funded by the investment vehicles of US billionaires, has offered the Internet Society (ISOC) to take over the .org registry; a move that has caused weeks of controversy that show no sign of slowing.

The figure was finally revealed by CEO of ISOC Andrew Sullivan at a webinar late last week. "I have only just now received permission to disclose a new piece of information, that we have not been able to disclose before," he told online attendees.

"And that is the amount of money that the Internet Society is receiving under this. I am sorry I wasn't able to send it around, but this is new information that we will post later today. The total purchase price in this case is $1.135bn."

The level of secrecy over the deal has been one of the most significant concerns over the proposed sale, which will shift more than 10 million .org domains to a for-profit company after having spent the past 16 years run by the non-profit organization Public Internet Registry (PIR), that was itself set up, and is wholly owned, by the non-profit Internet Society (ISOC). Specifically, the deal involves Ethos taking over PIR, thus taking over the top-level domain it oversees.

Previously: ICANN Eliminates .org Price Cap Despite Overwhelming Opposition
.ORG TLD Sold to Investment Firm Ethos Capital


Original Submission

ICANN Needs To Ask More Questions About the Sale of .ORG 18 comments

After the sale, Ethos Capital, having paid $1.135 billion for .ORG to ISOC, will have to recoup that investment on a scale that's expected of a private equity firm. This week, Ethos revealed for the first time that some $360 million of the purchase price will be financed with a loan. The payments on that loan will have to come out of Ethos's profits, so they will probably need to raise more money per year than ISOC currently does. While Ethos could try to simply increase the number of its "customers" for .ORGs, PIR has tried this in the past, and the demand for the domains has remained largely flat. This is no surprise; the nonprofit sector just doesn't grow at exponential rates.

That brings us to the myriad reasons nonprofits have criticized the deal: every other way that Ethos might increase profits is bad news for .ORG users. And these tactics aren't farfetched: every one of them is already delivering profits in other sectors, often while harming domain registrants and their visitors.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/icann-needs-ask-more-questions-about-sale-org

Previously:
As Internet Pioneers Fight to Preserve .org's Status, those in Charge are Hiding Behind Dollar Signs
ICANN Demands Transparency from Others Over .org Deal; As for Itself... Well, Not So Much
Internet Society Says Opportunity to Sell .org TLD to Private Equity Biz Came Out of the Blue
As Pressure Builds Over .Org Sell-Off, Internet Governance Orgs Remains Silent
.ORG TLD Sold to Investment Firm Ethos Capital
ICANN Eliminates .org Price Cap Despite Overwhelming Opposition


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by bradley13 on Friday November 15 2019, @05:17AM (8 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Friday November 15 2019, @05:17AM (#920613) Homepage Journal

    Pretty much by deginition: a non-profit should be nearly worthless, since they cannot ever make money.

    Yeah, naive. A lot if non-profits exist to enrich their top management, to launder money, or for other unfortunate reasons. Which is it in this case?

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday November 15 2019, @05:47AM

      by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Friday November 15 2019, @05:47AM (#920616)

      Well, at least if they want to register PIR.COM, it seems to be available for a measly $75k.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @08:54AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @08:54AM (#920638)

      Pretty much by deginition: a non-profit should be nearly worthless, since they cannot ever make money.

      This is simply not true. The main difference between a non-profit and a for-profit organization is how surplus assets are distributed, not whether or how much money they make.

      For example, a for-profit might disburse a surplus to shareholders as dividends, but a non-profit cannot do this.

      • (Score: 1) by webnut77 on Friday November 15 2019, @06:02PM (1 child)

        by webnut77 (5994) on Friday November 15 2019, @06:02PM (#920735)

        For example, a for-profit might disburse a surplus to shareholders as dividends, but a non-profit cannot do this.

        Towards the end of a non-profit's fiscal year, if they have a surplus, they can just give the CEO and members of the Board a bonus.

        Bingo! No profit.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:59PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:59PM (#920818)

          Disbursements that personally enrich the executive staff or BoD that are contingent on revenue or profit are one of the few things non-profits cannot do. In addition, PIR is a registered support organization of unclassified type, which limits their use of the money even more than the standard non-profit rules to:

          A supporting organization must engage solely in activities that support or benefit its supported organization(s). In addition to making direct grants to its supported organization(s), a supporting organization generally may make grants or provide services or facilities to:

          • individual members of the charitable class benefited by its supported organization(s),
          • another supporting organization that supports the same supported organization(s) or
          • a state college or university described in Internal Revenue Code section 511(a)(2)(B) (colleges or universities which are government instrumentalities).

          However, any such grants or provision of services or facilities must support or benefit the supported organization(s), not just the direct recipients.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday November 15 2019, @01:02PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 15 2019, @01:02PM (#920677)

      since they cannot ever make money

      They can have huge revenue, huge budgets, and wield huge power; they just can't pay dividends to public stockholders, so instead of stock option incentives they have to pay higher salaries.

      In theory, in the old days, the only way to raise capital was shareholders (and bondholders, long story) to build yer railroad. Now a days all capex is done by nationalized orgs, the national railroad has the govt pay directly for choo choo engines, for example. Meanwhile the businesses outsource everything "as a service" and gig economy and cloud, so they need no capital and thus need no shareholders... Would not be surprised to see a long term trend of a lot more of the economy made up of non-profits and b-corporations. Not next week, duh, but over the course of this century.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @03:27PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @03:27PM (#920698)

        "instead of stock option incentives they have to pay higher salaries."

        I work at a non-profit and my salary is 1/2 of what it was at a for-profit.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:39AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:39AM (#920841) Homepage Journal

          I work for this here for-profit (PBC) corporation and make not a damn thing except having a fun site to argue, troll, and make stupid jokes on. Guess it all just depends on the specific company.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @03:38AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 16 2019, @03:38AM (#920877)

          GP meant the execs.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday November 15 2019, @05:56AM (6 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday November 15 2019, @05:56AM (#920617) Journal

    Just to let everyone know, the words "Ethos" and "Ethics" are only tangentially related. ἦθος [wikipedia.org] in Greek can mean customary, and thus usual, somewhat like the word mores [wikipedia.org] in Latin, but then also related to the Greek νόμος, ('law'). ἠθικός [wikipedia.org] means doing the right thing, which is only related to habit or custom is those happen to be ethical.

    Now the kicker is that Capital can mean the center, or the highest, or scum-sucking merchantile bastards. So if this be true, that Ethos Capital is taking over a non-profit, larceny be afoot.

    And to Bradley13 in the heart of the universalist globalist beast that is capitalism in Swissland, what the heck does "Pretty much by deginition:" mean? denigation? deroganation? disinterstellarnigation?

    • (Score: 1) by WeekendMonkey on Friday November 15 2019, @08:28AM (5 children)

      by WeekendMonkey (5209) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 15 2019, @08:28AM (#920635)

      I suspect "deginition" is definition, 'g' and 'f' being adjacent on the keyboard.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Friday November 15 2019, @10:08AM (4 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Friday November 15 2019, @10:08AM (#920644) Journal

        Aristarchus BTW would like to have a very adjacent gf.

        --
        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday November 15 2019, @11:05AM (2 children)

          by aristarchus (2645) on Friday November 15 2019, @11:05AM (#920652) Journal

          Το πληκτρολόγιό μου είναι στα Ελληνικά

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday November 15 2019, @12:10PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday November 15 2019, @12:10PM (#920659) Journal

            Επίσης στο ελληνικό πληκτρολόγιο υπάρχουν φ και γ δίπλα-δίπλα.

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:49PM

            by Bot (3902) on Saturday November 16 2019, @11:49PM (#921116) Journal

            QUOD?

            --
            Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @03:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @03:28PM (#920699)

          They are adjacent at the end of his arms.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday November 15 2019, @12:23PM (7 children)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Friday November 15 2019, @12:23PM (#920661) Journal

    so the section of the internet that was for public interest has been purchased by a nebulous(no wiki page, marketspeak homepage with no specifics) financial entity.

    Erik Brooks
    Nora Abusitta-Ouri

    Exactly the type of people I don't trust with anything at all like this, as they have no demonstrated history of trust or work in the public interest, that I can find at least. They look like people who pay themselves 200k a year to post on linked in and go to meetings.

    For instance, compared to someone like me, they have no written works anywhere that I can find stating their beliefs for what the internet is and/or should be. Their plans, intentions, personal ideals (excepting 'character' naturally) are totally hidden. We have to derive what they are about from their linked in. (reply with link if Im missing something)

    This is really bad for the internet. Why are they spending so much time working on fixing what is not broken?

    Capitalism hates any idea that is for the public interest, that is just people caring about their society, or social-ism. Capitalism has no use for any of that, and seeks to destroy it at every opportunity. The capitalist is supposed to be celebrated that his expense of money, as in this case with 'ethos capital' and he has none of that attention to share with anyone who works for the good of society outside of the supervision of a capitalist.

    Like that some rich dude or other mucky muck whose parents got him into harvard has a billion dollars to spend, and he chooses to spend it on the .org TLD? Like really, this dude is not a grass roots organizer, he is half corporate half bullshit, just like Mozilla.

    Where did the money come from to buy this? Who at ICann made the decision? I have so many questions about why these evil looking people decided to buy up the most trust-centric part of the web.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @01:09PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @01:09PM (#920679)

      They are teaching us a hard lesson: domain names and other centralized systems are bad. Switch to onions or something.

      • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by TheGratefulNet on Friday November 15 2019, @02:49PM (2 children)

        by TheGratefulNet (659) on Friday November 15 2019, @02:49PM (#920694)

        no, no onions. cakes.

        everyones likes cakes.

        parfaits, too.

        --
        "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
        • (Score: 2, Redundant) by Osamabobama on Friday November 15 2019, @06:04PM

          by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday November 15 2019, @06:04PM (#920737)

          The cake is a lie

          --
          Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:58PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:58PM (#920760)

          Look here funny man, soylent news is for serious discussions only! Yes yes one of the admins is a huge offender, but he is simy too fat for us to move. Please respect the standards of journalism and discussion.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:55AM (2 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 16 2019, @12:55AM (#920844) Homepage Journal

      ICANN had nothing to do with the decision. That kind of thing can happen when you decide to spin ownership and administration of a TLD off to an independent organization. Which is why SN only ever (and likely will only ever) issued shares to the two people who had a bunch of their own money in its creation. Yes, they could technically both decide to sell us to DICE but having put their money where their mouths were (and refusing every offer of a buyback to repay the debt) to have a site missing the shitty aspects of /., that's highly unlikely.

      I have so many questions about why these evil looking people decided to buy up the most trust-centric part of the web.

      A) It's not even remotely the most trust-centric part of the web. It's just a TLD with a stated purpose. Not even a socialist-ish or even especially organized purpose, just not a commercial one.
      B) Being unknown doesn't make you evil-looking, just unknown. It doesn't take a conspiracy or evil intent to fly below the radar, just doing boring-assed business and not being a bunch of flashy assholes.
      C) Making a profit on domain names doesn't make you evil. Not even an obscene profit. They're domain names not epi pens. Might make them assholes though.

      I really don't know if it's going to fuck up .ORG or not but if it does, it does. It'll be a shame because of the history but there are plenty of fairly inexpensive TLDs still out there.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday November 16 2019, @10:38AM (1 child)

        by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Saturday November 16 2019, @10:38AM (#920943) Journal

        If they ruin .org, sure there are a lot of cheap .io and .biz, but the normies and even people like me have learned that a .org is something that has more trust.

        DNS is odd but the elbow connects to the funnybone, icann approved the original owner, and then the original owner gets to sell to whoever they want and ICANN can't veto? I think they could veto.

        I am suspicious of anyone who gets to own a 'capital' fund when I don't know how he has earned any money.

        Capitalists like to brag when they can, and if they are not bragging there is a reason.

        Do you remember the last time someone was a 'capitalist' 'money manager' and no one asked how he got his money?

        Answer: Epstein

        If you want more of the same, keep blindly supporting a class of leaches. I haven't gone to harvard, but I have worked my entire life fixing the internet and making computers work, and I have a website with just about all of my political beliefs clearly stated, why am I providing more value to the internet than these alleged owners of it? (who are also apparently independently wealthy)

        They will ruin .org, and the people who will really suffer are people with lower IQ's who have a hard enough time figuring out which shill organization is real and which one is a payed shill operation run by rich people to confuse them.

        The .org name is now operated by rich people whose interest is confusing them, and the people most hurt by it are not going to probably ever be able to adapt to .onion. Also good luck keeping your address private as an owner, every organizer in the entire world will be able to hunted down by the mafia ezpz.

        Good job well done. - TMB (this is you making apologies and trying to smooth it over like nothing happened)
        (I am only expressing skepticism, mr brooks is welcome to come here and demonstrate how he is the right person for the .org ownership and how all of my surface level observations of what he(if he is even human, he looks kindof robotic) is are totally off the mark, and he earned his money by saving up his lawn mowing earnings or what.

        But I will bet you in the last week mr brooks has posted 3 times on linked in and attended 5 meetings, written 10 emails, been in the office for about 15 hours, and drives a car that costs over 70k. And his daddy was rich.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @02:53PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 16 2019, @02:53PM (#920974) Homepage Journal

          I dunno where you got that .ORG had any trust to it but it appears that you've learned something that's simply not true.

          Capitalists like to brag when they can, and if they are not bragging there is a reason.

          Um, that's your radical socialist misconceptions talking. Anyone who understood capitalism would know that you don't put up public advertisement if you're not trying to entice the general public to your product or service. How often do you hear hedge funds advertising on the TV or radio? How about industrial fabrication businesses? How about an ad for chemical cleaning of chicken houses in between flocks? Bragging is not a trait of capitalism, it's a trait of individuals. Advertising is a trait of capitalism and you don't advertise to people who are never going to give you money.

          I'm an unrepentant capitalist and you won't find a trace of any of my businesses online unless someone's happened to talk about them on social media for some extremely weird reason. I haven't been hiding anything, I just haven't ever catered to the general public. Word of mouth and targeted sales conversations get my products and services to the people it would matter to because I go way out of my way to make sure they think I do impeccable work. Now I also turn down a whole lot of work because I'm just not interested in trading any more of my fishing and otherwise fucking off time for money. And I have no desire at this point in my life to hire people to trade their time on my behalf. That's just me though, I'd rather have time than money past a very low bar because you can trade time for money but never the other way around.

          ...this is you making apologies and trying to smooth it over like nothing happened...

          No, because I've done nothing to warrant an apology and two seconds after I post this I won't think about it ever again unless it becomes relevant to a conversation. All I did was try to let you know that your brain is seriously fucked up and you would benefit from professional help. It gains me nothing for you to like me, so I genuinely don't give a shit if you do or not. It was just a bit of inconsequential concern for my fellow man presented in my usual manner.

          mr brooks is welcome to come here and demonstrate how he is the right person for the .org ownership

          Frankly, I very much doubt he is. But doubt logically necessitates that I admit that I do not know. If or how much he fucks things up is an unknown and cannot even be accurately inferred ahead of time.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by exaeta on Friday November 15 2019, @03:36PM (9 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Friday November 15 2019, @03:36PM (#920700) Homepage Journal

    I've had it in the back of my mind for quite some time. A DNS alternative, that could work alongside DNS in whatever apps decide to support it. I though of how it'd work and came close to implementing a version of it in C++/boost.asio. Improving on DNS by learning from DNSCurve, DNScrypt, etc. Lack of time and resources has prevented me from taking it to conclusion.

    If there is serious interest in prying back name resolution from greedy corporations, I might pick it back up. It costs money to maintain root servers though.

    My ideas include:

    Top level domains by country and also a ~net domain. Each country could be handed exclusive control of its TLD if it wants to take it over. ~net domain would be managed by the community. a ~indv TLD as well.

    Each legal entity is entitled to one domain, and the legal entity information is available to all people who query the domain. Except for an ~anon TLD.

    ~indv For people. Domains don't have to be renewed, you own yours forever. Can get a redirect with proof of legal name change.

    Require affidavit of identity to register domains outside of ~anon. Also a ~*.tm sub-TLD for trademarks (must show proof of registration).

    E.g.

    • ~us.corp.google
    • ~indv.bob_q_smith82
    • ~us.corp.mozilla
    • ~net.root-servers
    • ~uk.corp.bobs_apples
    • ~us.tm.virtualbox
    • ~us.tm.firefox
    • ~anon.3AFE89BC00DB7FE
    • ~anon.a_site
    • local~mycorpsite

    Let me know if you like this idea.

    --
    The Government is a Bird
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @04:14PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @04:14PM (#920710)

      If you're not reengineering at least half of the protocol stack with it, there isn't much of a point. DNS is busted. But so is TCP. No sense in writing in writing a new set of sockets unless you're going to do both.

      • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday November 15 2019, @06:49PM

        by exaeta (6957) on Friday November 15 2019, @06:49PM (#920756) Homepage Journal

        It could go over bluetooth, probably. My goal is that it doesn't really care about what the layer below is. Although I'd probably use UDP instead of TCP, for the actual server. I think the server could have a socket abstraction layer.

        Replacing TCP with another protocol via UDP might be interesting as well, but that's less important.

        --
        The Government is a Bird
    • (Score: 1) by webnut77 on Friday November 15 2019, @06:13PM (2 children)

      by webnut77 (5994) on Friday November 15 2019, @06:13PM (#920739)

      So the TLD is at the beginning? You must program in Java.

      Use the tilde in the URL? You'd have to escape that when you use that URL with lynx on the command line.

      • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday November 15 2019, @06:46PM

        by exaeta (6957) on Friday November 15 2019, @06:46PM (#920754) Homepage Journal

        Yes, the tilde is illegal in DNS domain names, so I thought it'd be good for backwards compatibility.

        Any other good symbols to use that are illegal in DNS names?

        --
        The Government is a Bird
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Marand on Friday November 15 2019, @09:01PM

        by Marand (1081) on Friday November 15 2019, @09:01PM (#920797) Journal

        So the TLD is at the beginning? You must program in Java.

        It just makes sense, though. If the TLD comes first your domains start vague and increase in refinement as you read, which matches how the rest of the URL works. /foo/bar/baz.html starts at the root, then traverses the filesystem in the same way.

        Our current system is backward in that regard, because you end up with URLs that start fine-grained followed by the more vague portions (subdomain.domain.TLD), then switch to coarse-to-fine resolution on the filesystem portion. It's a lot like how, when writing dates, the US puts the day of the month in the middle (12-24-2019) instead of picking either 24-12-2019 or 2019-12-24 and having a consistent coarse-to-fine or fine-to-coarse format.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 16 2019, @01:00AM (3 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday November 16 2019, @01:00AM (#920848) Homepage Journal

      Domains don't have to be renewed, you own yours forever.

      Eh, not a great idea. Companies fold and people die. Both should free the name up for reuse but dead people and closed companies tend not to notify anyone that they don't exist anymore. Needs to be limited time with a respectable grace period where the name will be parked and cannot be reissued to anyone but you in case you forget to. Maybe three or four year registrations and one year grace.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:18PM (2 children)

        by exaeta (6957) on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:18PM (#921053) Homepage Journal

        The idea is that names aren't reissued to different entities.

        ~indv.bob_smith97 doesn't need to be reused. Bob Smith can have ~indv.bob_smith98 instead.

        If companies die then I see that as a valid ground for termination of registration, since a new company could be formed under the same name. Checking every ~5 years sounds sufficient to me.

        --
        The Government is a Bird
        • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:21PM (1 child)

          by exaeta (6957) on Saturday November 16 2019, @07:21PM (#921055) Homepage Journal

          On further thought, I guess trademarks should be renewed every year, since they can change hands and etc. Probably require renewal of ~anon as well.

          --
          The Government is a Bird
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