It said the sale would’ve caused “unacceptable uncertainty” over the future of the world’s third-largest domain registry, which is largely used by non-profit organizations. In a blog post, the organization said it’s dedicated to making the right decision to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifier systems:
— EFF (@EFF) May 1, 2020 Last November, Public Interest Registry (PIR), an organization that operated .org, said that it was handing over control of the .org top-level domain (TLD) to a private company named Ethos Capital. The private firm planned to pay $1 billion in endowments to PIR as part of this deal. This move came after ICANN’s announcement in June to remove all price caps on the .org domain. [Read: Please don’t let Assassin’s Creed Valhalla be too much like Odyssey] The move was heavily criticized the world over, by the likes of privacy-focused organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Several of these opposers also created a site called savedotorg.org, appealing to ICANN to stop the sale.
— Tim Berners-Lee (@timberners_lee) November 27, 2019 ICANN said today that the sale would’ve forced PIR to serve the interest of the domain-holding corporate instead of a wider public community. EFF said this is “a victory for aid organizations, corporate watchdogs, museums, clubs, and everyone working in the public interest.” You can read ICANN’s full announcement about the decision here.
