NGOs use Davos World Economic Forum Stage to Protest Sale of .org Domain Registry

[Sam Lanfranco]

James,
Two very short points, meant to be shared and reflected on. 
	* Without full access business analysis, what the books of PIR and the
(admittedly confidential) business plan of Ethos Capital would suggest as a
range of likely sale prices for PIR is highly speculative. Either of us
could be off significantly. Venture capital investments are frequently in
start ups (where they work the odds and invest in a number hoping that some
pay off) or in mature companies where the parts can be spun off and sold.
Neither of those are the case for PIR and the .org registry and we (you and
I) are only trying to make best guesstimate business valuations.  
	* That aside, the real question is to what extent is the Board doing its
due diligence around the terms of the sale, the proposed ownership
structure and the appropriate wording of the .org registry contract, to
protect some agreed up (or implicit) notion of the public interest. There
has been almost no discussion on this front. 
We of course have no way of knowing either a reasonable market valuation,
or the extent to which the Board, with ICANN org support, is doing their
due diligence. It we were talking about Pepsi Cola or Alibaba we would be
talking either as uninvolved observers, or as shareholders. Here we are
supposed to be part of a stakeholder community but (almost) talking in the
dark. I have little sense of who is listening, and in the outside press I
fear that they are more captured by vested interests (on whatever side)
than concerned with healthy informed discussion. 
Within NCSG we have detailed a list of complaints and objections, some well
founded and some not, but what we have not had is stakeholder community
discussion focusing on the way forward. There has been a bit of back
channel chat where people seem to be saying "Do it and get on with it, so
we can turn to other things". I think that underestimates the long term
damage to both ICANN and the .org domain name holders if this is done
badly. If it is done badly it will not reflect well on the role of NCSG as
the ICANN stakeholder group working on behalf of the interests of the
non-commercial stakeholder community.  
Sam L. (NPOC/NCSG)

---- Original Message ----
From: James Gannon 
To: "Sam Lanfranco" , "NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU" 
Sent: Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: NGOs use Davos World Economic Forum Stage to Protest Sale of
.org Domain Registry
	Just some observations, the sale price is actually pretty much in line
with the market for EBIT multipliers in the tech sale market. 

	Also its Ethos that is carrying the debt not PIR and is entirely normal
for a PE firm, I would be much more concerned if they were not financing at
least part of the deal. There is a huge amount of FUD being thrown around
by so many folks who have such little exposure to the PE/VC market (I will
note that Im not including you in that Sam just using this post as a
springboard) and who are merely being taken for a ride by much of the
biased coverage of the deal. Its entirely undermined most if not any chance
the NFP sector had of putting some good controls and security around the
change in control of .org, I wish that many of the organisations who are
protesting this had done an ounce of research on the deal rather than
jumping into activism on a sector that they clearly have not engaged in for
a long time, but suddenly now there is a clear item that they can use as a
cornerstone and send out lots of nice fundraising emails about.   

	Highly disappointing IMO. 
	--- 

	James Gannon  

	   - It's in the archive!
            
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