Sale of internet's dot-org suffix nixed after non-profit organisations protest
After widespread opposition, the organisation overseeing internet names of domain has voted against the USD 1.1 billion sale of the dot-org online registry to an investment firm.
The board of the Los Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted late Thursday never to permit the sale to Ethos Capital of the website suffix that's widely used by non-profits and community groups.
Activists, politicians and hundreds of organisations had protested that charges for non-profits would rise and freedom of expression would be at risk if a for-profit company were responsible for dot-org, among the original domains created in the mid-1980s.
Vetoing the sale is “reasonable, and the proper move to make,” said ICANN's chair, Maarten Botterman, in a blog page post.
Botterman noted the “fundamental public interest nature” of the organisation that currently oversees dot-org. That could have been used in one “bound to serve the interests of its corporate stakeholders” had the sale been through, he said.
He also expressed concern over what the debt mixed up in transaction would mean for all those dot-org users, which include public radio broadcaster NPR, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and medical humanitarian group Doctors without Borders.
Ethos Capital and the Internet Society, the non-profit founded by many of the internet's early engineers and scientists that currently runs the registry, had said concerns were misplaced. Ethos had offered concessions including capping price hikes.
The investment firm said in a statement that your choice “will suffocate innovation and deter future investment in the domain industry” and that it's evaluating its options. The Internet Society said it is disappointed “that ICANN has acted as a regulatory body it had been never designed to be.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had campaigned against the sale, said ICANN's decision was a “stunning victory for nonprofits and NGOs around the world working in the public interest.”
