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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.


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  • (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
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (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