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

[Wisdom Donkor]

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  / www.afrigeocon.org
Tel: +233 20 812 8851
Skype: wisdom_dk | Facebook: kwasi wisdom |  Twitter: @wisdom_dk
__________________________________________________
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,
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20200122/31c7666f/attachment.html>