To another 10 years under our new overlords at TheNew.Org

[qwk]

Anyone wonder if and/or how that's gonna affect bitcoin.org & bitcointalk.org?

NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the .ORG Community. Earlier today, the Internet Society and Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced that they have reached an agreement with Ethos Capital, an investment firm that helps transform and grow companies in today’s rapidly evolving digital economy, under which Ethos Capital will acquire PIR and all of its assets from the Internet Society.

[tmfp]

Anyone wonder if and/or how that's gonna affect bitcoin.org & bitcointalk.org?

NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the .ORG Community. Earlier today, the Internet Society and Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced that they have reached an agreement with Ethos Capital, an investment firm that helps transform and grow companies in today’s rapidly evolving digital economy, under which Ethos Capital will acquire PIR and all of its assets from the Internet Society.

Yeah I read about that, but not with that "exciting new" spin, didn't quite know where to post about it. Our Esteemed Leader seems quite chilled.

PURE CRONYISM: .ORG Registry value pillaged by ICANN ex-CEO

[lucky80]

It's the opposite IMO. They will grow because of this forum's user quality content. We give them impact, thanks to the admin, staff, DT user and Donators.

[DaveF]

Probably will not matter at all. In the beginning the .org domain was supposed to be for NFP and other types of org of that nature.
However, it has not been like that for years. Anyone can register and run any kind of site on a .org domain.
All I see coming from this change is an nominal increase in fees. Going from $9.00 /year to $11.00 / year is probably going to be the only thing that is different.

-Dave

[Cøbra]

I just renewed bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.org all the way up to 2029.

This whole thing backfired badly on Ethos Capital. Not only have they caused a PR nightmare for themselves and raised questions around corruption at ICANN, they've also made their intentions so obvious that many .org domains have already renewed up to the maximum limit preemptively, limiting the revenue Ethos can extract in the future.

Always been curious about the power of these registry operators though. Suppose Verisign one day went crazy and suspended Google.com or refused service, can they even do that? Or just simply refused to allow Google to renew the domain and then took it for themselves?

There will be a big push to move away from ICANN eventually, and more towards alternatives to DNS, but if those alternatives end up controlled by a consortium of companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc, it'll just mean these companies will own the internet. They already de-platform certain people, imagine if they can make your site completely disappear from DNS and search engines and social media.

A blockchain solution is unlikely to work here either, it would remove trust and centralized points of failure, but would come with the cost of having to know how to secure your keys which most users aren't interested in doing.

[qwk]

Suppose Verisign one day went crazy and suspended Google.com or refused service, can they even do that? Or just simply refused to allow Google to renew the domain and then took it for themselves?

Most likely, they would find them in a highly expensive civil lawsuit they'd ultimately lose at the expense of billions of Dollars, so in short: I don't see that happening.
The real issues would rather be smaller organizations with no good legal standing, like e.g. bitcoin.org.

[tmfp]

I see that Namecheap were pretty much FUDing back in April when the proposed (now adopted) removal of the price cap on .org fees first came up.
This was before there was any inkling of the "privatization" of PIR by the sale to Ethos.

Imagine if next year you had to pay 10 times as much to renew your domain name as you paid this year.
Based on an action proposed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), price caps could be removed on several top level domains, which could significantly increase the price of domains.

Do you think that Namecheap realized that their highly profitable business model could be potentially ruined if, after they had "presold" registrations up to 10 years into the future based on a zero inflated ~$10 p.a., the new owners, a non non-profit with no price increase cap, could take over and annually increase the price which they charged Namecheap?

Ethos have seen fit to respond via a custom made (.org) site, keypointsabout.org.

Ethos Capital is an investment company firmly rooted in the belief that prosperity should be built and shared

Yeah, someone else builds it, then you share it.

I just renewed bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.org all the way up to 2029.

As a matter of interest, Bitcointalk.org's Whois Record ( last updated on 2019-11-24 ) shows

Registry Expiry Date: 2023-06-24T05:19:00

Is that just slow updating, will your 10 year fee prepayment automatically extend the Expiry date?