ICANN sold .org control to private equity firm.

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Commodore
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ICANN sold .org control to private equity firm.

Post by Commodore »

Price protections for .org domain names are set to lapse. Safest bet according to some sources it best to max out on ten year registration before the price skyrockets. Maybe the near end for zzt.org (z2 edition)?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... rice-caps/

QP I'm not sure still owns the site. I think he basically has one of those jobs essentially owns your output whether on the side or not, so he basically stays covert and away.
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Dr. Dos
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Re: ICANN sold .org control to private equity firm.

Post by Dr. Dos »

See! One time Quantum seemed displeased when he learned I wasn't even 100% sure he was the one paying for the site.

It got brought up earlier today in the Worlds of ZZT discord server and Quantum P. is there and definitely aware. Lord knows it wouldn't be the first time z2's url changed. It's been what z2.com, zzt.org, zzt.org, and zzt.org?
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Quantum P.
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Re: ICANN sold .org control to private equity firm.

Post by Quantum P. »

Regarding ownership: I currently have both the zzt.org domain name and the Dreamhost account.

Regarding .org domains: there's a lot of hand wringing right now because nobody knows precisely how much prices will increase. What we can reasonably assume:
  • Prices will go up. This was already a thing: the cap was not a hard cap, but 10% per year. Inflation will most likely continue. Greed will definitely continue.
  • Prices will be constrained by the market. If you're a big organization with money, you'll be willing to fork over money to keep your .org domains, if only to prevent damage to your reputation, e.g., a porn company or a disgruntled employee grabs them. But there are many more smaller organizations that will switch their domain, and now that's 12-something dollars per year that the new owners of the .org TLD won't get. The new owners won't want to raise prices above some unknown balance point, or worse, trigger outrage that results in mass cancellation.
  • Prices likely won't exceed those of "premium" TLDs. Namecheap is offering $58.88 per year for .ai (normally $68.88?), $115.70/yr for .dev, and $32.88/yr for .io (though there's an initial charge of $1388 -- amortize it over 10 years and that's $171.68 per year). The .org TLD is valuable, but it's not what I would register if I wanted to get VC money for my blockchain startup, so I would expect renewal rates to be less than these.
I guess my summary is that this may be bad for the internet as a whole, but I want to put it in perspective that this is not a world-ending event for zzt.org. Renewing out for ten years seems prudent, though. Even after ten years, my guess is that renewing zzt.org will still be affordable for me: even if the price jumps to $100/yr, I'm already paying ~$100/yr for hosting, which is on the order of other subscriptions that I already pay without too much outrage (Spotify, Prime).
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Re: ICANN sold .org control to private equity firm.

Post by Dark-Star2018 »

Quantum P. wrote:I guess my summary is that this may be bad for the internet as a whole, but I want to put it in perspective that this is not a world-ending event for zzt.org. Renewing out for ten years seems prudent, though. Even after ten years, my guess is that renewing zzt.org will still be affordable for me: even if the price jumps to $100/yr, I'm already paying ~$100/yr for hosting, which is on the order of other subscriptions that I already pay without too much outrage (Spotify, Prime).
:keen:

If it came to it I'd happily pay a Benjamin myself just to keep this place from dying.
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