CEO DATELINE - ICANN rejects sale of .org registry
CEO DATELINE - ICANN rejects sale of .org registry
- May 1, 2020 |
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Walt Williams
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has turned down the sale of the Public Interest Registry to a private equity firm after many nonprofits objected to the change in ownership.
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ICANN announced Thursday that its board of directors would withhold its consent to transfer PIR from the nonprofit Internet Society to Ethos Capital. The firm had offered the Internet Society more than $1.1 billion for the registry.
PIR is the manager of the .org generic top-level domain (gTLD) name widely used in the nonprofit world. Many nonprofits—including many associations—said Ethos could jack up the prices for registering domain names if it were to assume control of the registry. Their concerns were mirrored by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who raised questions about the sale in letters to ICANN. (ICAAN is the nonprofit entity that oversees domain registration and is based in California.)
"After completing its evaluation, the ICANN Board finds that the public interest is better served in withholding consent as a result of various factors that create unacceptable uncertainty over the future of the third largest gTLD registry," ICANN said in a statement.
Neither Ethos Capital nor the Internet Society had issued any statements on their websites about the rejection as of Friday afternoon.
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