Web inventor worries profit priorities could taint .org domain
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Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee is worried that a for-profit company plans to buy the organization that administers the .org internet addresses used by millions of nonprofit organizations.
On Nov. 13, the Internet Society, a nonprofit devoted to increasing the internet's reach, security and privacy, announced a plan to sell the .org oversight role to investment firm Ethos Capital by the first quarter of 2020. The Internet Society's Public Interest Registry (PIR) sells nonprofit organizations the right to use .org domains, but if the sale is completed, that work would move to Ethos.
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ICANN lifted the price caps for .org domains in May 2019. Now there's a behind closed doors deal, involving former ICANN executives, to sell the non-profit .org registry to a for-profit investment company. ICANN already lifted the price caps on gTLDs .info and .biz and since then renewal prices for those have skyrocketed. It's only a matter of time until VeriSign demands to have the price caps lifted for .com and .net domains.