To the best of my knowledge, the "recent" actions and activities at ICANN are not politically-linked at all.  It's been going on for quite a few years - see the .amazon debacle as an example.
Nor is there anything illegal, per se, about the PIR acquisition, at least that's publicly known right now.
There is a fair bit of speculation about why, exactly, ICANN is behaving the way it is - even kleptomania and incompetence can only explain so much.  Aliens preparing to cripple our technological society hardly sounds like a more far-fetched explanation at this point!
-Adam

On Nov. 26, 2019 21:39, Hartmut W Sager <hwsager@marityme.net> wrote:
Yes, I was about to make a similar comment - the best ccTLD's, like ".ca" and ".uk", should be relatively safe, since even with ICANN's overall authority over all TLD's, surely they cannot dictate to CIRA or Nominet that these country-based authorities must go the privatization/capitalism route.
 
I like the idea of doing some 10-year renewals right now, because that will at least deprive the new profiteers of an initial 10 years of ill-gotten gains, but it does result in a long-term gamble on establishing a well-regarded and well-recognized ".org" site.
 
I presume this new privatization move is loosely related to the same political forces in the U.S. that ended net-neutrality in 2019.
 
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331


On Tue, 26 Nov 2019 at 12:40, Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net> wrote:

By definition, since the blatant failure of governance is occurring at ICANN and the *entire* domain name system falls within ICANN's remit, no.

However, .ca - managed by CIRA, which has a fairly strict mandate (so far, anyway), is a fairly good bet IMHO.

-Adam


On 2019-11-26 12:07, Alberto Abrao wrote:

 
Is there any TLD that's safe - for now, at least - from such an interference?


 

---- On Tue, 26 Nov 2019 11:43:00 -0600 athompso@athompso.net wrote ----

On 2019-11-26 10:29, Glen Ditchfield wrote:
> As you may have heard, ICANN removed the price caps on .org domains,
> then
> quietly decided to sell the .org registry to a private equity firm
> linked to a
> former ICANN CEO and several American billionaires (https://
> www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/26/org_selloff_internet/).
>
> So, a bunch of respectable organizations have started a petition to
> stop that,
> at https://savedotorg.org/ . Signing might help.


Given the absolute failure of governance at ICANN, which seems to be
spreading to NRO, IANA, etc., I think "Save dotOrg" has about as much
chance of success as "Save Concordia" did locally, no matter the
justness of the cause.

What *would* be a good idea, though, despite the "rewarding bad
behaviour" aspect of it, would be renew any .org domains you have, NOW,
for the maximum term (10 years). Several industry observers are
expecting prices to rise >10x, so you'll probably be saving a good chunk
of money by doing it now.

-Adam
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