> Have an administrator `setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep /your/binary/here` and you can use any port you want.

And remember to do it again every time the binary is updated :/

> chown /etc to nobody:wheel and

Bad idea! nobody is supposed to own no files at all. You run untrusted services (or untrusted users without account; something like anonymous FTP access) as nobody. This would potentially allow the least trusted entity to change your configs.

Apart from that. Since root can read any file anyways there is no reason to change the owner. And some programs may complain if the configuration is not owned by root.