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ICANN Wants $35,000 From Dot-org Wannabes

Posted by michael on from the pay-to-play dept.

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."

10 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Wouldn't it be nice... by 1WingedAngel · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

    Tim

    1. Re:Wouldn't it be nice... by autocracy · · Score: 2

      Yeah - JonKatz the DNS administrator. Great.

      --
      SIG: HUP
  2. The Point by repoleved · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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

    1. Re:The Point by Negadecimal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. Charities by 4of12 · · Score: 2

    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?

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  4. Is DNS showing its age? by Aniquel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Is DNS showing its age? by autocracy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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).

      --
      SIG: HUP
    2. Re:Is DNS showing its age? by autocracy · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.

      --
      SIG: HUP
  5. Re:Plese explain by Aniquel · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:.org != non-profit by markbthomas · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.