[Chapter-delegates] Arithmetic, orJoin our call to stop the sale of .org

[Dave Burstein]

John

Thanks for engaging. It's because people like you are on the board it's
worth thinking things out.

You also can be very important steering ISOC back on course however this
plays out. Most of the Internet Community has heard that ISOC is run by a
handful of selfish people. (Unproven. I know several and have said they are
honorable, if misguided.)  There's no denying our reputation is mud.
Changing that will require changes in what we do, including truly becoming
multistakeholder, with strong, well-supported, independent chapters being
involved in most major decisions.

Recovering our reputation also requires transparency, often promised but
never delivered. 10,o52 have signed the save .org petition, with 1,000 more
coming in every day. We need to be honest with ourselves about how we are
perceived, whether or not the deal goes through.

I cannot, for example, find out who our donors are. On net neutrality, our
position is close to Comcast and Verizon. On multinationals paying taxes in
the developing world, we support Google and Facebook's goals. It may or may
not be right to take their money; it's obviously wrong for us not to
disclose who is paying us.

I'm sure you have many other ideas. The staff is far too comfortable with
the way things are. The Board needs to step in.

Coenraad

Buried in this email thread are some of the numbers you are asking for.

"In 2017, PIR provided $74 million to ISOC; in 2018 $48 million. "
I've asked for the numbers for 2019, as reported from accounting, to give
us a further base, as well as the projections PIR has done. Domain renewals
etc. are predictable enough the projections should be fairly close.

Expected returns: Andrew has used 4.5% and 5% as nominal expectations for
an endowment. As John notes, that's far above contemporary safe
investments, which return much less. It's in line with standard practice in
pensions going back years.

The price: A reliable source tells me it is "well more than US$400 million"
everything else is rumor.

On what PIR will charge: Absolutely no commitment. The frontman for Ethos
seaks of "the spirit" of 10%. That's nearly meaningless, and he could be
replaced by the investors who have control.

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On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 2:30 PM John Levine via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> In article <
> CADZv+uadoLrAwgWK-HsCguLq4kq4yhu-V6DQmJ-ePA2iQ3hArA at mail.gmail.com> you
> write:
> >around long enough to know better.) There is mention of 10 million
> domains.
> >That equates to ISOC receiving $4/domain.
>
> That's in the right ballpark.  It varies somewhat from year to year.
>
> >.org makes now?  How big do you think the investment is?  Here in the
> >>
> >An investment that would yield 2%, and pay $40m, would need to be $2bn. At
> >4% it would need to be $1bn. At 8% it would need to be $500m. (Please
> >correct me if I'm wrong, I am still learning about this.)
>
> Those numbers also seem plausible, although I would expect that any
> investor's calculations would be more complex as they figure out what
> the earnings growth rate is under various future scenarios.  To make
> it clear, I have no idea what Ethos' assumptions are.
>
> >Do you know of anyone who will cancel or move their website, emails, and
> >update their whole corporate identity, in order to save $10/year?
>
> Nope, but there are a lot of names in .org (and every large TLD) that
> are parked, or just aliases for a similar .com name or otherwise not
> in active use.  I doubt they would stay if there were a large price
> increase.
>
> Ethos has said the price will increase at no more than 10%/year, the
> old price cap rate.  Even if you don't believe that and the price were
> to double, we seem to agree that the legit registrants will be fine.
> I know people who work at PIR who are working on domain quality,
> encouraging legitimate organizations and users to register and keeping
> out the crooks who use domains for malware and phishing.  That's what
> I hope the registrants know they're paying for.
>
> R's,
> John
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