A private equity firm wants to buy ‘.org’ for $1 billion. A Berkeley-based cooperative says, ‘not so fast’

[Mueller, Milton L]

Wisdom:
You need to understand that Woodcock/PCH is an interested party with a conflict of interest; he is currently being paid to do things for PIR and would lose that contract if the sale goes through. This scare talk about downtime is not independent technical analysis, it is a sales pitch. Take it with a grain (or boulder) of salt.
I have read his economic “analysis” in his letter to the board and found it borderline comical. He claims (without any evidence) that the functions her performs for .ORG are worth $30 million but that he provides the service for some much smaller number, around $300,000. So first he claimed that PIR would have to dramatically raise prices to replace him, now he is complaining that they aren’t spending enough. His numbers are made up.
Let’s realize we are in a propaganda war about .ORG. Esther Dyson, a venture capitalist who scorned the noncommercial constituency and opposed democratic elections for ICANN board members, is succeeding in positioning herself to gullible American media as an advocate of noncommercial organizations and proponent of democratic governance of .org.  That kind of big lie ought to tip us off that powerful players are positioning themselves to grab something.

Dr. Milton L Mueller
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Public Policy



From: NCSG-Discuss <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> On Behalf Of Wisdom Donkor
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 4:30 AM
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: A private equity firm wants to buy ‘.org’ for $1 billion. A Berkeley-based cooperative says, ‘not so fast’

In this article<https://www.berkeleyside.com/2020/01/16/a-private-equity-firm-wants-to-buy-org-for-1-billion-a-berkeley-based-cooperative-says-not-so-fast?fbclid=IwAR27YNOQPMVyzX4zlu3FD_WjK9SqnbwhKIQOHZfAGEv9KHrK9A871UzUJIw> on the sale of PIR to Ethos Capital, the executive director of the Packet Clearing House states (emphasis added):

[Ethos Capital] said they’re entertaining bids with an operating cost of $330,000. The current operating cost is just over $30 million, so that would be a 99% cut in spending. You don’t get 15 years of uninterrupted service for $330,000 a year.

It’s really hard to predict future downtime, just like it’s hard to predict the effect of earthquakes on buildings. There can always be a bigger cyberattack in the future, so being prepared means being responsible and spending the money.

But insofar as we were able to estimate, you get about 3.12 days of downtime per year. Multiply that times every nonprofit in the world. We’re talking about Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross. We’re talking about the IATA that does international air traffic control. Do we really want international flights grounded for three days a year so [Bain founder and U.S. Senator] Mitt Romney can make a few hundred million more? Not a reasonable societal tradeoff.

Once you’ve axed 99% of your spending you also need to jack up the prices, in a Martin Shkreli-style maximization of profits. Then, how else do you make money? Let’s say somebody goes to investigate contraception or abortion. Regardless of where they wind up, whether that’s Planned Parenthood or some crazed right-wing church website, either way, that’s going to be a .org. The feed of everybody who went looking for those things is going to be for sale. Ethos has already bought five companies to monetize the private information they’d be harvesting if they got .org.

I am sharing these extracts for information purposes.

WISDOM DONKOR
President & CEO
Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation
P.O. Box CT 2439, Cantonments, Accra | www.aodirf.org<http://www.aodirf.org>  / www.afrigeocon.org<http://www.afrigeocon.org>
Tel: +233 20 812 8851
Skype: wisdom_dk | Facebook: kwasi wisdom |  Twitter: @wisdom_dk
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Specialization:
E-government Network Infrastructure and E-application, Internet Governance,  Open Data policies platforms & Community Development, Cyber Security,  Domain Name Systems, Software Engineering, Event Planning & Management,
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