CEO DATELINE - ICANN delays .org decision until May
CEO DATELINE - ICANN delays .org decision until May
- April 20, 2020 |
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Walt Williams
The nonprofit organization that oversees the Internet's domain system will delay a decision on whether to approve selling the .org registry to a private equity firm after receiving numerous letters opposed to the proposal, according to the news site Ars Technica.
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Ethos Capital has offered more than $1.1 billion to purchase the nonprofit Public Internet Registry (PIR)—which manages the .org top-level domains that many nonprofit organizations use in their web addresses—from the Internet Society. The proposed transaction has alarmed nonprofit groups that worry the cost for maintaining their website domains will skyrocket once Ethos Capital assumes control of the registry.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers had been scheduled to make a decision Monday about whether to approve the sale. The decision has already been pushed back once after ICANN received a request from the California attorney general's office for more information about the transaction.
ICANN recently announced it has once again pushed back the date of the decision, this time to May 4. The delay came after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra raised numerous concerns about the transaction in a letter, Ars Technica reported. The group is based in California.
Specifically, Becerra said little is known about Ethos Capital and the firm has refused to answer many questions about the proposed sale. He also noted the sale will saddle the firm with $300 million in debt.
"If the sale goes through and PIR's business model fails to meet expectations, it may have to make significant cuts in operations," Becerra said. "Such cuts would undoubtedly affect the stability of the .org registry."
In February, Ethos Capital offered a number of concessions if the sale were allowed to go through, including agreeing not to raise fees for registering and renewing domain names by more than 10% per year on average for eight years. Those concessions have so far failed to silence critics of the proposal.
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