[liberationtech] Stop the sale of the Public Interest Registry, says EFF

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, David Ulevitch wrote:
> It’s gross. I’m hoping for, and waiting for, hackers to leak emails 
> (etc) from Fadi and the entire ISOC and PIR staff, along with all 
> affiliates. I’m sure the paper trail will be incredible and 
> illuminating. This appears to be so dirty and corrupt. And the CEO of 
> ISOC, Andrew Sullivan, has refused to say anything.
> 
> Stopping this feels like a very worthwhile use of my time and money.

David, you in particular would have a lot of sway on this as a founder of 
a DNS company, so I hope you do.

The weak-sauce counter-messaging has begun: https://www.keypointsabout.org/

The clearest failure seems to be on ICANN here for delegating .ORG 
registration services without a termination date, only triggers for exit 
based on non-performance. Thus, there's no way for ICANN to regularly put 
the registry contract out for re-bid (to get some price competition going, 
if nothing else) without PIR completely falling over on some specific 
technical issues (like uptime, etc). Who signs a contract to lend someone 
an asset without a termination date of any sort?

So I'm more persuaded by ICA's letter to ICANN than the letter/approach to 
ISOC:

https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/ICA-Letter-to-ICANN-Board-of-Directors-November-15-2019.pdf

We kind of tolerate ICANN's model of being independent from government 
and public pressure because we're happy that they can mostly (sadly not 
entirely) say no to government censors. They run a seemingly-mostly-fair 
trademark dispute process called the UDRP. There is a ton to criticize 
them on, but the DNS has held together. But the more they make mistakes 
like this, the more that top-level governance of the DNS becomes an open 
question again.

Brian


> 
> Sent via Superhuman iOS
> 
> 
> On Sun, Nov 24 2019 at 9:37 AM, <ycompanys at gmail.com> wrote:
>       EFF and 26 other organizations just sent a letter to the Internet Society (ISOC) urging it to stop the sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR)—the organization that manages the .ORG
>       top-level domain—to private equity firm Ethos Capital. Our message is clear: .ORG is extremely important to the non-governmental organization (NGO) community, and our community should have
>       a voice in decisions affecting the future of .ORG. 
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org 
> 
> 
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