[governance] PIR Case/or the .org sell

[bzs at theworld.com]

On November 28, 2019 at 10:10 woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock) wrote:
 > 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.

I've argued mostly to the walls here how the laxness and low price of
domains has had its consequences (other than making a few individuals
quite wealthy.)

Originally, like the 1980s, to get a domain you had to show some
evidence you had some sort of reason, you represented an organization
like IBM.COM or MIT.EDU or even REDCROSS.ORG. And they were free but
that's not the point.

The bar wasn't very high as the net opened ca 1990 but there was some
pressure to not just register some string because you thought it would
be cool to own (selling them came quite a bit later.) There were
exceptions.

What that has brought is this notion of WHOIS privacy.

If you actually are doing commerce with the internet, and that
includes not-for-profit etc, many countries require you to disclose
who you are, provide contact information to the public.

But as domains became pet rocks there was pushback for "privacy".

IBM doesn't care if you know the address and phone number of their HQ,
neither does MIT or the Red Cross, or any other legitimate
organization.

And if they sort of mind ok they can list their attorney's office or
similar.

The basic reasoning for requiring contact info came down to revealing
some place to serve legal papers if necessary. Hence a lawyer's office
was sufficient, or some third party proxy service (these do exist in
the WHOIS space.)

But you can't really expect someone who grabs FUNNYNOISES.ORG for $15
to have a lawyer or proxy etc. so they published their sales data in
WHOIS and some didn't like that.

It's a bit like many things on the internet, like spam for example. At
first opening it all up seemed like a great and democratic idea, and
then bleaker realities arose.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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