<story><title>The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation</title><url>http://blogs.harvard.edu/sj/2019/12/02/the-dot-org-fire-sale-sold-for-half-its-valuation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lancewiggs</author><text>I wrote about this too - linked in the article. 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lancewiggs.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;did-isoc-leave-1-billion-on-the-table&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lancewiggs.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million&amp;#x2F;year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m&amp;#x2F;year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion.&lt;p&gt;As any r&amp;#x2F;personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a maximum of 4% of your assets each year. This means $44m from the $1.1bn, which means ISOC is immediately worse off than they were forecasting for this year (~$55m). Alternatively use the Yale method, which in today&amp;#x27;s low-return market will yield similar or worse results.&lt;p&gt;Moreover it&amp;#x27;s clear that ISOC are not behaving as the sharpest of investors, so we can imagine that the endowment might be be poorly managed or over-spent.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cameldrv</author><text>The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest.  It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest.  The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest.  ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for registrations and stop trying to tax .org registrants with mandatory charitable donations to a dubious charity.</text></comment>
<story><title>The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation</title><url>http://blogs.harvard.edu/sj/2019/12/02/the-dot-org-fire-sale-sold-for-half-its-valuation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lancewiggs</author><text>I wrote about this too - linked in the article. 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lancewiggs.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;did-isoc-leave-1-billion-on-the-table&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lancewiggs.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million&amp;#x2F;year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m&amp;#x2F;year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion.&lt;p&gt;As any r&amp;#x2F;personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a maximum of 4% of your assets each year. This means $44m from the $1.1bn, which means ISOC is immediately worse off than they were forecasting for this year (~$55m). Alternatively use the Yale method, which in today&amp;#x27;s low-return market will yield similar or worse results.&lt;p&gt;Moreover it&amp;#x27;s clear that ISOC are not behaving as the sharpest of investors, so we can imagine that the endowment might be be poorly managed or over-spent.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>4ntonius8lock</author><text>I appreciate your excellent write up. When I read the allegations in the original article I kinda wanted more detail. You break it down very well with great attention to detail.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d like to place this here for those who only read comments:&lt;p&gt;.org registry rights belong to a non-profit - the rights were sold to a private equity group - somewhere between 50% and 90% below market rate. It was based on self dealing of the people given stewardship of the non-profit that manages .org&lt;p&gt;Basically, this is privatization Russian style. Not good. Even if you like privatization, no-bid stuff is just wrong.&lt;p&gt;Want to help support the democratic institutions which hopefully won&amp;#x27;t fail us? Look here:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drewdevault.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;dotorg.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drewdevault.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;dotorg.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>