ICANN Wants $35,000 From Dot-org Wannabes

dipfan writes "ICANN is opening applications for companies or organisations that want to run the non-profit dot-org registry - but has reduced the chances of it being run by a charity by insisting on a $35,000 fee from all bidders. VeriSign gives up the dot-org administration at the end of this year (O happy day!). The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticised the ICANN decision, saying if ICANN doesn't favor nonprofit groups in its evaluations, then it's unlikely that a nonprofit group will mount a challenge to the established addressing companies that will bid for dot-org."

Comments

Wouldn't it be nice...

[1WingedAngel]

If the various .orgs that are technology based (slashdot.org, linux.org) got together and did ran this themselves?

Tim

Re:Wouldn't it be nice...

[autocracy]

Yeah - JonKatz the DNS administrator. Great.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice...

[an_mo]

slashdot.org shouldn't be a .org. It's quite clear now that it is a commercial enterprise and while they should keep the .org they'd better default their pages to the .com.

Not that these root mean anything but it would be clearer if they did. That's the reason why the wikipedia (for example) chose .com suffix even if it is currently a purely noncommercial enterprise.

The Point

[repoleved]

I can see the point of requiring funds... it is probably supposed to

1. ensure that the entity that offers to manage the domain must be financially stable..
2. act as an disincentive to prevent frivolous offers from people/organisations who are not really serious
3. there might be equipment and/or other property being transfered as part of the deal, which has intrinsic value
4. established charities can probably afford $35000

Re:The Point

[Negadecimal]

1. ensure that the entity that offers to manage the domain must be financially stable..

There are other ways to check that an organization is financially stable. ICANN could just do a little due diligence and review top candidates' financial statements. No statements, no registrar.

Re:The Point

[NFW]

If they were just asking for a deposit, and/or if the money was going to be kept in escrow, I would agree with your reasoning.

This is just a way for ICANN to make money, nothing more, nothing less. Other TLD registrar apps work the same way, if I'm not mistaken.

Charities

[4of12]

Well, unfortunately, some of the most visible charities spend a great fraction of received donations on administrative overhead, bulk mail solicitations, telemarketing, etc. News articles several years back had tales of some outfits spending as much as 90% of proceeds that way. The United Way suffered a black eye several years ago when its then-head William(?> Arimony was found to be giving himself a $400k annum salary for his efforts.

Those "charities" would probably not balk at ponying up $35K if they thought they could recoup the investment due to a nicer sounding web presence.

Related issue, though - whatever happened to alternative root DNS servers?

Is there anyway for them to become more influential, by way of more client PCs or ISPs allowing lookups from unofficial but hopefully somewhat reputable servers?

.org != non-profit

[anti-snot]

An 'organization' is simply that. There is no nonprofit implication in the .org tld, other than the implied 'non-commercial' nature of it not being a .com. There is no reason that a non-profit has any more right to run this tld than anyone else.

Re:.org != non-profit

[markbthomas]

well, according to RFC 1591, .ORG was intended for "organizations that didn't fit anywhere else."

So take the set of all organisations, remove commercial organisations (.COM), educational institutions (.EDU), government organisations (.GOV), military organisations (.MIL) and network providers (.NET) and you pretty much have only non-profits and special interest groups left -- people who are unlikely to have thousand of dollars up their sleeves.

Is DNS showing its age?

[Aniquel]

I'm just curious here, what with all the recent ICANN controversy, is there a design limitation inherent in DNS that's preventing a better system?

It seems to me as though requiring root servers is just asking for a single body to come along and hijack the whole registration process - which is exactly what's happening.

Although DNS is a distributed model, it certainly isn't p2p - So would a p2p dns system remove the need for ICANN?

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[autocracy]

Yeah, and how do you control registration? What if somebody registered a domain that wasn't theirs? DNS is by nature hierarchial, and it should stay that way. As far as loads go, that's why you query your ISPs DNS, not the root servers. And if you disagree with it, start another set of root servers (don't I wish that were as easy as it appeared typed here).

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[Aniquel]

Again, this uses the same logic as current DNS. Why do you need to control registration? (Sounds like a silly question, I know, but think about it.) Use a FreeNet-type system, where often requested names get cached close to end nodes, to handle the load distribution. Build atomic name registration into the system, and have the people that actually own the boxes implement a standard registration policy - Govern name registration at the edges rather than the middle (Provided there's a standard registration agreement that prevents cyber-squatting and what not, use the court system for name conflicts (more fair than arbitration currently)).

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[autocracy]

Yup, the logic sure is the same.

In the current DNS system, after I request a lookup for a domain name, the server that gave it to me caches it. Every machine that asks that server again before the time out period gets the cached answer. This both keeps loads on the central system down, and allows the owner to specificy how often an update will take at max.

Next, if anyone can register, and the system is distributed so that it can't be controlled, how do you propose that names are removed? Interesting idea, dumb plan.

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[Aniquel]

And you're suggesting that a completely decentralized solution can't do the same? I grant you that a centralized DNS is easier to manage at the top levels -- But that's exactly what got us into the ICANN mess in the first place. Also, I didn't say that the system couldn't be controlled - it's just different control. If the edges now handle registration, it's up to the edges to administer their own names. Maybe an illustration is in order: So you register your domain "foobar.doodad" with your local ISP. They run a box that's part of an overlay network containing all the other dns boxen. Whenever a request for "foobar.doodad" comes along it gets routed to your local ISP (yes, there are key-based overlay networks. freenet is one of them, and there are many others). The dns info is backfilled on each node belonging to the ON on the way back to the requester. And the backfilled information contains your ttl, etc. In essence, it works the same as normal dns -- But without root servers. As for removal, that's now handled by your local isp.

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[autocracy]

You just described current DNS, but you forgot to mention how the ISP is supposed to have their entry. From their ISP perhaps? And what about them? Eventually, you have a TLD. It's possible to have a .quest .verizon .uunet etc, but that's the same as .com .org .net . And we have a term for when a root server points to another root domain: peering. Already happens as well. Try again, amis.

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[Aniquel]

You're misunderstanding p2p systems. There is no higher level TLD - Every time a name resolution is performed a key is generated. This key, though related to the name (could be the md5 of the name), will be significant only to the overlay network, and it fact will be used to properly route the request to the correct host. (yes, this means that a name-ip mapping could exist anywhere in the network.) For example, if foo.quest md5'ed to 123, then this request would get routed to host 123 within the overlay network. It's not the same as peering, and this is a significantly different structure than current dns. Again - The whole point is to eliminate administrative control of the root domains.

Re:Is DNS showing its age?

[autocracy]

I understand the p2p style systems like freenet. I understand the goal. What I don't understand is how you plan to keep somebody else from running md5 on foo.quest and then naming his machine 123. Half the world would end up at the wrong site or something.

Plese explain

[an_mo]

Can somebody explain? I am running a small site for a group of about 20 childhood friends with .org name. Does this mean I will have to pay 35K? A steep price hike.

Besides, what root are we supposed get? We're not a commercial organization, we're a group of friends!!!

Re:Plese explain

[Aniquel]

No. ICANN is asking for an organization to take over the registration process for the .org domain - This probably won't affect owners of .org domains at all. The 35K is for the opportunity to bid on taking over .org registration. It's about as stupid an idea as making name owners pay 35k for their names, but you don't need to be worried.

Nice...

[jobsy]

In its contract with ICANN, VeriSign agreed that if a nonprofit group won the bid to operate dot-org, VeriSign would provide the winning bidder with $5 million in seed capital to get started.
So they pay out $35k and get $5m if they win the bidding.. nice!

Non-Profit Profit

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the new owner collect registration fees? If so I can't imagine it taking less than a few years to recoup the cost of buying the rights to run the TLD.

Posted by someone with their own .org domain.