ICANN Blocks the Sale of .Org Domain to a For-Profit Group

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN), the non-profit organization that oversees the Internet’s domain name system, has rejected a controversial proposal to sell the .org registry Public Interest Registry (PIR) to private equity firm Ethos Capital.

The decision was made after a lengthy investigation spanning several months. One of the reasons given for refusing to approve the sale was that it was a “change from the fundamental public interest nature of PIR to an entity that is bound to serve the interests of its corporate stakeholders, and which has no meaningful plan to protect or serve the .ORG community.”

ICANN must now open a public process for bids to find a new home for the .Org domain, said the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) and Electronic Frontier Foundation in a joint statement on Thursday. NTEN had been running the campaign to prevent the sale, garnering the support of 871 organisations.The .Org domain, the third-largest top-level domain, needs a secure and reliable steward that can prove it has the public and nonprofit sector’s interests at its core.