As part of its “Year in Review” series, the EFF shares their dramatic behind-the-scenes details about 2020’s fight over the future of .org domains. It begins when the Internet Society (ISOC) announced plans to sell the Public Interest Registry — which manages the .org top-level domain (TLD) — to private equity firm Ethos Capital. “If you come at the nonprofit sector,…
Tag: icann
.Org Registry No Longer Being Sold — But What Should Happen Next?
One of the advisors to the #SaveDotOrg campaign was Jacob Malthouse, co-founder of the.eco top-level domain (and also a former ICANN vice president). “Here’s what needs to happen next,” he writes in an essay on Medium:
As of today, the #savedotorg campaign has nearly 27,000 supporters and 2,000 nonprofits behind it. It dwarfs any campaign Internet governance has ever seen. There’s no…
ICANN Halts $1.1 Billion Sale of .Org Registry
Charlotte Web shares a report from The Register: ICANN has halted the proposed $1.1 billion sale of the .org registry to an unknown private equity firm, claiming this was “the right thing to do.” The DNS overseer has been under growing pressure to use its authority to refuse the planned transfer of the top-level domain from the Internet Society to Ethos…
ICANN Delays .Org Sale After Scathing Letter from California’s Attorney General
Ars Technica reports:
ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the Internet’s domain name system, has given itself another two weeks to decide whether to allow control of the .org domain to be sold to private equity firm Ethos Capital. The decision comes after ICANN received a blizzard of letters from people opposed to the transaction, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Becerra’s letter…
ICANN Delays .Org Sale Again After California’s AG Intervenes At Last Minute
ICANN has again delayed a decision on the sale of the .org registry, pushing the issue off for another month. The Register reports: The organization’s board of directors was due to decide today on whether to approve the $1.13 billion sale of the .org domain from the Internet Society to private equity firm Ethos Capital, but a last-minute letter from California’s…
ICANN Cheers Registrars’ Efforts to Fight COVID-19 Scammers
ICANN chief executive Goran Marby has a message for its hundreds of registrars. Though ICANN can’t involve itself in content issues, “That does not mean we are unconcerned or unaware of how certain domain names are being misused in fraudulent activities during this global pandemic.”
It is this concern that prompted me to contact the registries and registrars thanking them for their…
Opera To Support Sites Using the .Crypto Top-Level Domain
Opera has updated its lightweight browser for Android so that it can access unofficial .crypto domains, primarily to exchange cryptocurrency. The Register reports: Support for .crypto in Opera will “bring the blockchain-browsing experience to a new level,” the Norwegian software maker gushed on Monday. Crucially, dot-crypto simply doesn’t exist in the global domain name system, and is not recognized by DNS…
EFF: .Org Sale ‘Threatens Instability and Dysfunction’
In a scathing editorial, EFF continues to oppose Ethos Capital’s plan to buy the PIR’s .org domain registry for $1.1 billion, arguing that “the current system is stable and functional, and changing it threatens to introduce instability and dysfunction with no countervailing benefit to the community…” “[W]hile there is nothing currently wrong with .ORG, there is a lot that could go…
ICANN To Hold First-Ever Remote Public Meeting Due To COVID-19 Outbreak
penciling_in shares a report from CircleID: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced that its ICANN67 Public Meeting, which was to be held in Cancun, Mexico, will now be held via remote participation-only. This decision was made as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, considered a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization….
The Price of a .Com Domain Is Set To Rise, and Some Sellers Aren’t Happy
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: If you’re the sort who buys domains for fun, or to inspire you to start a future project, your hobby’s about to get a little pricier. ICANN is just days away from ending a consultation into the future of the .com top-level domain that’ll put an end to Obama-era price freezes. If successful,…