ICANN says no to transfer the business that sells .org addresses.
KTSDESIGN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
ICANN, the organization responsible for basic internet naming and addressing technology, announced on Thursday that it was selling and transferring the company that sells rights to use the .org internet domain to a private investment firm will not approve.
The Internet Society, a 27-year-old non-profit organization committed to online improvements such as better privacy and security, has been running and funding a department called Public Interest Registry for years. PIR sells the right to use .org domain names and Ethos Capital agreed to purchase PIR in November for $ 1.13 billion.
The deal raised concerns that a private equity firm may not have the same public interest motives as the Internet Society. World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee feared the sale could be a “travesty,” and on Thursday the ICANN board seemed to agree and described the withholding of the generic top-level domain transfer approval as “the right thing.” “.
“The ICANN board notes that due to various factors that create unacceptable uncertainty about the future of the third largest gTLD registry, public interest is better in withholding approval,” the board said in one statement.
One of these concerns was that Ethos Capital would be forced to serve the interests of its corporate actors at the expense of protecting the .org community. It also declined to be asked to do business with a company that is not part of the non-profit organization that it said “had operated the .org registry responsibly for nearly 20 years, protecting its own community is embedded in its mission “.
Ethos called ICANN’s decision a “dangerous precedent” that “will stifle innovation and deter future investments in the domain industry”.
“ICANN has exceeded its area of responsibility, which is limited to ensuring that routine indirect control transfers (such as the sale of PIR) do not affect the security, stability and reliability of the registry,” said Ethos in a statement. “Today’s action opens the door for ICANN to unilaterally reject future transfer applications based on the agenda-driven pressure from external parties.”
PIR also criticized ICANN’s decision, calling it “disappointing”, saying it was “a violation of the articles of association, processes and contracts”.
CNET’s Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.