[governance] [article] Did ISOC leave $1 billion on the table?

[Ayden Férdeline]

With respect Suresh, the picture is bigger than just a potential price increase.

There are absolutely no protections in place to protect the interests of .ORG, .NGO, and .ONG registrants, so we cannot protect against the many harms we can predict today and the harms we can't even imagine yet.

But some of those predictable harms include the potential for censorship / content take downs.

If all top level domains are run for profit, the Internet is being run for the interests and benefits of private companies. The DNS appears to me to be consolidating. Various top level domains are being acquired by entities connected to the one venture capitalist. At the moment, a PIR under ISOC's control offers up one piece of the DNS that is not purely under commercial control - and that is what we are about to lose.

What is the benefit of this sale to a .ORG registrant? Ethos Capital has committed to spending more dollars on marketing (i.e. opening up .ORG to further registrations and perhaps more commercial uses) and maintaining PIR's current spend of $30,000 a year on "Impact Awards"/small grants (which will not benefit many registrants at all).

As a consequence, 10 million registrants will be asked to pay more for their domain names every year, and the DNS will be subject to the risks mentioned above. It's not worth it, to me. And I think ISOC has an obligation to ensure not just the health of it's own bank account, but to ensure the Internet too remains open and free.

Ayden Férdeline

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, 2 December 2019 10:53, Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:

> The story I read had a goose instead of a hen but not really.  If the pricing goes above a certain extent domainers will stay away, but most non profits should be able to afford it.  $15 moving to even $25 a year is, for example, less than the cost you can spend on a dinner with your family in India (or a very modest meal stateside)
>
> As I said, given the relatively few non profits compared to domainer owned domains (or general population owned domains) in .org, the new buyer could just provide free registration to registered nonprofits and still not see any appreciable difference to his numbers.
>
> From: <governance-request at lists.riseup.net> on behalf of "Imran Ahmed Shah (via governance Mailing List)" <governance at lists.riseup.net>
> Reply to: <ias_pk at yahoo.com>
> Date: Monday, 2 December 2019 at 2:53 PM
> To: Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com>, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net>
> Cc: governance <governance at lists.riseup.net>
> Subject: Re: [governance] [article] Did ISOC leave $1 billion on the table?
>
> Should it be compared with
>
> The story hen of golden eggs...
>
> On Monday, 2 December 2019, 14:06:47 GMT+5, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:
>
> I found it interesting as well.
>
> I think it’s worth understanding that the analyst doesn’t understand ISOC’s goal. The motivation driving ISOC is to disentangle itself from the domain name. Maximizing revenue is a strong, but dependent goal. From my observation and conversations, ISOC is completely uninterested in maximizing revenue to a degree which would require that they stay in the business of selling domain names, or stay dependent on the ebbs and flows of that business.
>
> So some of his recommendations are substantially off the mark.
>
>                 -Bill
>
>> On Dec 2, 2019, at 09:43, Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com> wrote:
>
>> 
>>
>> A venture capitalist and ex-Mckinsey consultant offers some thoughts on the ISOC sale of PIR, and concludes that ISOC has undervalued PIR by about US $1 billion. This analysis is not perfect (it seems to conflate revenue with earnings) but is interesting nonetheless:
>>
>> https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-on-the-table/
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Ayden Férdeline
>>
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