It has been concluded that the .org domain will stay public and not be sold on to a private organisation.
The suffix .org is one of the original seven top-level domains from the birth of the internet, and is significant for this as well as its association with charities, NGOs, and nonprofits.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit organisation that oversees all domains on the internet. The .org domain registry is currently owned by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), a subsidiary of the Internet Society. Both organisations are non-profit, which is why the recent plan to sell the PIR, and thus the .org domain, was so controversial.
The proposal was to sell the PIR to a private equity firm – Ethos Capital – for more than $1 billion. ICANN has rejected this due to the lack of wider support, aside from Ethos Capital themselves. There were over 30 groups who wrote to oppose the deal, alongside numerous negative general feedback. ICANN stated there was “virtually no counterbalancing support except from the parties involved in the transaction and their advisors”.
One of the major deciding factors to reject the offer was ethical reasoning. ICANN’s ethos is to make decisions “for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole”. Many board members disapproved of the deal, claiming that it did not adhere to ICANN’S ethos.
There were also concerns as to the amount of debt the PIR would incur. Ethos Capital was planning to leverage the buyout of the .org registry, requiring the PIR to take out a $360 million loan to help finance the transaction. Despite the company’s profits amounting to higher than this, the potential of such a financial burden is not desirable.
Although this controversial deal will not proceed, there is still an opportunity for the Internet Society to come back and submit another proposal addressing these concerns. The Internet Society responded to the ruling, stating that “despite ICANN’s decision, our work to connect the unconnected and strengthen the Internet will continue”. It isn’t clear if the Internet Society will try again to sell the PIR after the surge in negative responses.