Hundreds of nonprofits ask ICANN to pause deal to sell .Org registry to for-profit private equity company.
Over 400 nonprofit entities and 18,000 individuals have signed on to a letter authored by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), asking ICANN to halt the sale of .Org until changes are made.
The letter asks for “legally binding commitments to safeguard the rights of NGOs and other non-commercial registrants against financial exploitation and arbitrary censorship” by any group that runs .Org. Ethos Capital is buying the .org registry from Internet Society (ISOC).
The signatories are concerned about price increases on .org domains and the ability for whoever runs the registry to censor domain registrants.
An additional letter to Internet Society, which is selling the registry for $1.135 billion, asks it to abandon the deal.
Signatories include unions, libraries, mental health clinics, and more. Notable signatories include Communication Workers of America, Girl Scouts, and the League of Women Voters. Two Internet Society chapters (Netherlands and Jakarta) are also on the list.
It is a pleasure to watch people coming together over this.
This contract should be going out to tender to find a new and more suitable operator.
One only needs to see the $249.99 annual renewal fees that GoDaddy charges on premium .world domains like boxing.world to know that Ethos Capital will most likely do the same thing if there’s nothing to prevent it.
So for all of you who are holding valuable .org domains, beware; Ethos will gradually make your renewal costs exorbitant so that you will either not renew or you will sell them to end users at fire sale prices.
Agree, clearly 10% a year isn’t enough for them, so if it were 15% a year that totals to a 400% rise over ten years with compounding, straight from the pockets of not for profits. These guys can smell the money.
Credit where credit is due. ICANN gave PIR something it never asked for. Everyone “smelled the money” who would not want a deal like that?
There are two problems here, ICANN’s action of removing price caps which was NOT requested, and PIR selling out just after the new contract.
So in effect PIR is selling their contract that ICANN wrapped with gold for them. I doubt PIR would be selling had that not occured ….
I think we need to keep ICANN in the hot seat. I think everything ICANN is doing is a practice run for .COM (and .NET, etc).
This is all on ICANN.
Cheers, great post.
Campaign to shut ICANN down is the only solution to this shocking grab of internet domains.
When to read this Over 400 nonprofit entities and 18,000 individuals have signed on to a letter. I write and answer with this another
This domain market brings together a large group of companies such as its employees, small business, freelance that form a World, a single million-dollar sale of a Domain (.org) does not solve the lives of millions of other people in this world who are hungry, thirst, illnesses, they lack medicines, they lack pencils, notebooks, books, they lack many things that those who help them employ a volunteer of totas the races that with their efforts make it possible to repair the damage caused by the bad ways of governing the rich countries in favor of suffering our children tomorrow, we are not extended of this danger neither they nor we nor all the NGOs and Associations, Foundations, which use the (.ORG).
I find all of them missing their signatures or that Ethos Capital has bought them with their silence and promises of charity.