[governance] PIR Case/or the .org sell

[Bill Woodcock]

> On Nov 28, 2019, at 3:53 AM, bzs at theworld.com wrote:
> 
> 
> On November 27, 2019 at 10:32 ayden at ferdeline.com (Ayden Férdeline) wrote:
>> Dear Bill,
>> 
>> Yes, I have heard the counter argument, which is that this sale will provide ISOC with additional and more-stable funding. Is there another one? I'm afraid I don't find it persuasive. ISOC is proposing to sell out the non-commercial community for its own private greed. A wealthy ISOC is in the interests of ISOC, and not the Internet community as a whole.
> 
> Here's a counter-argument:
> 
> .ORG, and the vast majority of other TLDs (including the 1,000+ new
> gTLDs), don't actually mean anything.
> 
> There are a small handful of exceptions and most of those are just
> self-imposed by some idealistic registry. Most any could change
> tomorrow and just begin selling SLDs to anyone with $15 or whatever.

Yep, .org does not have a monopoly, just a brand.  There are plenty of other TLDs, more all the time, and if there are organizations that really can’t afford $12/year or $15/year for a domain, they can use a domain from one of the free TLDs (not the surveillance-economy-subsidized ones, but the actual free ccTLDs).

I just don’t see a couple of dollars a year as a substantial threat.  It would be great if people would spend a couple of dollars a year on Internet infrastructure, but having it go to ISOC to fund Internet governance workshops and so forth is also good.  And a little bit of that would go to the IETF, would be great.

                                -Bill

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