Private Equity is the root of all evil, they bought the industrial chain, the food chain, and the government... now this...
Dot-org, though, is special. Under the stewardship of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the organization to which ICANN delegates control and operation of the dot-org domain, dot-org serves the nonprofit community as a trusted partner. Nonprofits provide websites and use email with confidence and peace of mind. Even while business interests captured most of the Internet’s policymaking, dot-org remained protected from profit-driven rulemaking.
Today, though, that independence is under threat. The Internet Society, a nonprofit to which ICANN delegated the duty to host PIR, announced a deal in November to sell PIR and its license to sell dot-org names for more than $1 billion. The buyer is Ethos Capital, a private-equity firm with investments in digital advertising, data brokering and other Internet services...
LinkListen,
Way back in the early days of the Internet, it was believed that website NAMES were a big deal
"Get in on the good real estate," they all said, imagining they knew. "Dictionary names are limited and everyone will want to pay big money to get one."
"It's like having a location on the virtual street," they said, "There's only one business.com so having business dot com must be worth tens of millions of dollars."
Now after [strike]10[/strike] [strike]15[/strike] 25 years of experience with the bullshit, we know that the domain names are not worth shit.
They never were. There's no "street". Every location on the internet is one click away from every other location. Nobody really much uses the domain names. You can only remember so many names. And actually, nobody goes to websites any longer. Since 2012 they just go to their apps.
So the dumb top level domain isn't a thing, either, and it never really was. They wasted a lot of money on this. There's no danger, nothing will change, nobody ever believed that dot org websites are any different from any other website. cellar.org will remain exactly the same as it has for all these years and nobody cares about dot org.
I'm not enraged anymore. Thank You, Sir.
To pay over a Billion dollars for it somebody cares, and somebody expects a return on that money because that's enough to rent a couple of congress critters.
So what are they up to, how will they make this pay? Up the yearly rents? Slip commercials in somehow. Make you sign up to access any dot org site?
They're going to start a new tippy-top level domain called ditto org ("org). It's going to take the virtual world by storm. Only websites run by Artificial Intelligence will be eligible for a ditto org domain name and every dot com, dot org; or, dot whatever with an AI will want a choice ditto org name and be willing to pay BIG bucks to operate under the stewardship of the Hi & Lois Society.
All they can do is sell/manage the rights to the names. They've already agreed not to raise the price prohibitively.
At one point, The Public Interest Registry wanted to remove sites like The Cellar from dot org. The Cellar not an organization in the public interest. They wanted to move towards that, and away from non-profit organizations. Although The Cellar is not a registered non-profit organization either.
Not registered, but a bonafide non profit, and we would be a public service if they would only listen to us. :lol:
Hi & Lois Society
I read Hi & Lois every Sunday.
Why would they do that?
They gave a billion reasons.
Now after [strike]10[/strike] [strike]15[/strike] 25 years of experience with the bullshit, we know that the domain names are not worth shit.
They were back then because Google did not exist.
Especially pre-Google, because all you had then was Yahoo! directory and the open source directory, and nobody really cared and those directories died soon enough.
I've watched the souls of many a founder shrivel and turn black because they bought a name, and built something, and nobody showed up.
Those directories were a nightmare Google was welcomed with open arms and offers of first borns, they could do no wrong... we thought.