03/02/2020

Ethos Capital Offers Concessions in Effort to Ease Concerns About Proposed .Org Sale

The .org domain registry's sale continues to draw critics

On Feb. 21, Ethos Capital—the private equity firm seeking to buy the rights to operate the .org domain registry—offered a set of legally binding concessions to .org registrants concerned about the proposed sale.

Specifically, Ethos has offered to cap price hikes for initial or renewal registrations of .org domain names at no more than 10 percent per year for the next eight years, and establish a “stewardship council” with the authority to veto proposed modifications to .org registry policies on censorship, freedom of expression, and use of .org registration and user data. Notably, the council would not have veto authority on future price hikes.

The sale of the .org domain registry to Ethos, first announced last November, has been met by a growing chorus of critics. Since 2003, .org has been run by a nonprofit corporation called Public Interest Registry. PIR’s contract to manage .org was renewed last year by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which also removed a longstanding price cap of 10 percent for renewal of .org domain names.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.