alt Hacker News> ICANN DNS became a money grab
It’s too bad more people don’t understand how the domain industry is structured under ICANN. IMO, the registries are ICANN’s customers, the registrants are part of the product being sold, and the registrars are a liability shield.
One day there will be a grab for .com.
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Fun fact (you probably remember), you used to report phishing sites with one simple email and they would actually be taken down.
These days I get the feeling a lot of the registrars are essentially/effectively in on it (at least by inaction). A well-run ICANN feels needed, who can track takedown compliance.
I still remember when they started charging for domains. Until late 1995, they were free.
In hindsight, quite lucky it’s a California non profit. That allowed us to stop the dot-org sale.
It’s a protection racket too. When they first launched generic tld’s, donuts(a shady registry) had a product that didn’t allow domain registration but -did- block registration of a domain across all tlds in case you didn’t want to pay for company-name.[200+ tlds]