ICANN Delays .Org Sale Again After California's AG Intervenes At Last Minute (theregister.co.uk)
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ICANN has again delayed a decision on the sale of the .org registry, pushing the issue off for another month. The Register reports: The organization's board of directors was due to decide today on whether to approve the $1.13 billion sale of the .org domain from the Internet Society to private equity firm Ethos Capital, but a last-minute letter from California's attorney general Xavier Becerra appears to have upended the plan. Rather than take a vote, the ICANN board debated the issue and ultimately decided to put off a decision until May 4 -- the fourth such delay. The organization formally acknowledged the decision late on Thursday evening local time.
"We have agreed to extend the review period to May 4, 2020, to permit additional time to complete our review," it said. The attorney general's letter [PDF] arrived just hours before the meeting and told the non-profit organization in stark terms that it should not approve the sale as it "raises serious concerns that cannot be overlooked." "Empowering a for-profit entity that could undermine the accessibility and affordability of the .org domain, which serves nonprofits, should concern all of us," the California AG's office told The Reg. "We're urging ICANN to deny the request to transfer control of the .org domain to a for-profit private equity firm. In California, we're committed to an Internet that serves everyone and we're simply concerned that this transfer puts profits above the public interest."
"If, as proposed, Ethos Capital is permitted to purchase PIR, it will no longer have the unique characteristics that ICANN valued at the time that it selected PIR as the nonprofit to be responsible for the .ORG registry," Becerra's letter notes. "In effect, what is at stake is the transfer of the world's second largest registry to a for-profit private equity firm that, by design, exists to profit from millions of nonprofit and non-commercial organizations." "Little is known about Ethos Capital and its multiple proposed subsidiaries," the letter states. "Even less is known about how these for-profit corporate entities and private investors will operate their businesses... Given the lack of transparency regarding Ethos' future plans, approval of the transfer may place at risk the operational stability of the .ORG registry."
"We have agreed to extend the review period to May 4, 2020, to permit additional time to complete our review," it said. The attorney general's letter [PDF] arrived just hours before the meeting and told the non-profit organization in stark terms that it should not approve the sale as it "raises serious concerns that cannot be overlooked." "Empowering a for-profit entity that could undermine the accessibility and affordability of the .org domain, which serves nonprofits, should concern all of us," the California AG's office told The Reg. "We're urging ICANN to deny the request to transfer control of the .org domain to a for-profit private equity firm. In California, we're committed to an Internet that serves everyone and we're simply concerned that this transfer puts profits above the public interest."
"If, as proposed, Ethos Capital is permitted to purchase PIR, it will no longer have the unique characteristics that ICANN valued at the time that it selected PIR as the nonprofit to be responsible for the .ORG registry," Becerra's letter notes. "In effect, what is at stake is the transfer of the world's second largest registry to a for-profit private equity firm that, by design, exists to profit from millions of nonprofit and non-commercial organizations." "Little is known about Ethos Capital and its multiple proposed subsidiaries," the letter states. "Even less is known about how these for-profit corporate entities and private investors will operate their businesses... Given the lack of transparency regarding Ethos' future plans, approval of the transfer may place at risk the operational stability of the .ORG registry."
The Internet is for porn.. and profit. Apparently. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mod parent up, freshly out of points.
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if the .org registry is in the hands of a for-profit company, I think that will herald the beginning of the end for a free-and-open internet
Are you serious? You're at least a decade or more too late for the "the beginning of the end for a free-and-open internet".
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It's been moving in that direction for quite some time now
It's always been that way. Or did you think AOL was pushing keywords for the good of nerds and tinkerers. The beginning of the end of the free-and-open internet has been every year since the birth of the internet.
It happened with AOL.
It happened when Gopher died.
It happened with Microsoft and IE/ActiveX.
It happened with SSL and HTTPS.
It happened when ISPs stopped hosting Usenet.
It happened with Google becoming dominant.
It happened with Facebook.
It happened with TLDs being opened up.
It happened with DoH.
It h
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I was so satisfied with the local BBSes for my networking needs that I didn't get on the internet until a bit late in the game, by the time I got there in the mid 90s, it was already more corporate and less open than the BBS scene.
I think it must have died between `91 and `93.
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If a person or group of people are doing something online, and they can't get a .org domain because of the ebil corporation... they can always use a .com address, and still offer all the same services in the same ways.
When you're calling something the "nail in the coffin" of something, it helps if the there is actually going to be something substantially different after the supposed change.
The .org stuff is purely a matter of organizational politics; it matters as a chapter in the fight for control of the p
Sorry to point out the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the obvious needs to be pointed out. No for profit entity is going to cough up a billion dollars for something unless they expect to make a hefty profit on it. That means they will be expecting to make over a billion in profit over a period of not more than 5 years in order to pay off their expense. I'm guessing they wouldn't be interested unless they believe they can double their money in that 5 year period, so more like 2.26 billion in profit over that time frame.
Since there are now about 8 million .org registrations, that works out to either a 500% increase in price (they already paved the way for that by removing the price cap over strenuous objection) or they'll have their hands out to the U.S. and other governments for a handout.
If the current non-profit is unable or unwilling to continue, the .org registry needs to be transferred to another non-profit for it's real commercial value of $0.
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What puzzles me is the valuation - USD$1B. Who approved this figure?
But 300 million of that is going to be debt. Doesn't that mean the real value is only 700 million? So, someone is creating 300 million out of nothing.
Someone, somewhere (or likely more than one) hatched a plan to create 300 million out of nothing. So they conspire to "value" the PIR at 300 million over its real value, and offer it to a company as a leveraged buyout. Surely that can't be legal? Maybe OK for a private company, or even a publi
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Here's what they actually gaurenteed.
"1. Affordability of .ORG Domain Names: Fees charged to registrars for initial or renewal registration of a .ORG domain name will not increase by more than 10 percent per year on average for eight years from the start of the current Registry Agreement, under a precise formula that does not permit front-loading of those price increases. Through this commitment, .ORG will become one of the only TLDs (Top-level Domains) to have a price restriction and it will remain one of
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Interestingly, 10% per year for 8 years = an increase of 214% overall. The wording seems suspiciously constructed to obfuscate that. That won't happen on year 1 since they can't front load, but I'll bet it won't wait till year 8 either.
As you say, after that, bend over.
Next step (using documents I don't have), find the kickback.
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And, Kudos to the AG in California. I hope that they're as aware when an injunction needs to be filed.
The letter is worded as if to make a veiled threat to simply take ICANN into receivership. That's the thing about a non-profit; it is actually a type of charity. The bar is rather low for the government to take it over, because the people controlling it don't have any interest! It is the public good that is interested, and the State has a low bar to speak for the public good in the case of non-profit corporations.
Generally they just fix the charter, appoint new board members, and set it loose again. It happ
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You can't actually sell a non-profit at all, you can only disband it and donate the assets to another non-profit. This isn't legal in any case; California will simply say "no," and in the end it is their call because the nonprofit is a legal entity that is being regulated by the State of California.
So the fraud parts don't matter; if the deal goes through at all, it means that they got Trump on board, and process went out the window. And they're hoping their lawyers can get it done in a way that won't just
Re:Sorry to point out the obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently the obvious needs to be pointed out. No for profit entity is going to cough up a billion dollars for something unless they expect to make a hefty profit on it.
The Chief Purpose Officer, Ms. Abusitta-Ouri, at Ethos served at several positions within ICANN and an advisor to the ambassador to the UAE. As executive director of Digital Ethos Foundation [www.digita...foundation] it appear that she has access to the capital investors and contacts within ICANN that is driving the sale of .org. On paper their ethical framework appear to be a few virtue signaling websites with not a great deal of substance.
Ethos Capital [ethoscapital.com] appears to be one of these venture firms that come into an organization without clearly understanding its purpose and then tells them how they should be doing things. Some people here have probably experienced this first hand and even 5 minutes of digging suggests that you have nothing to apologize for.
If the current non-profit is unable or unwilling to continue, the .org registry needs to be transferred to another non-profit for it's real commercial value of $0.
I think any company whose buy-line is Ethos Capital is a new investment company firmly rooted in the belief that prosperity can be built and shared with all the stakeholders in our investment ecosystem suggests they can generate profit. The .org community, of which they intend to draw profit from, is mentioned last.
That does give us some insight to their priorities.
In other words (Score:2)
We really need a good 10 year ban on "public" employees going to work for those companies they're supposed to regulate.
Public Employees? (Score:2)
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maybe that's the problem.
Or maybe its well overdue time for a vote of no confidence in the entire ICANN board. Should have happened after they created the .sucks domain
Delay means they were going to approve sale (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Delay means they were going to approve sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, agreed. This would have been a great time for ICANN to kill the deal and blame it on the AG if they had any intention of killing the deal. Instead, they seem to be hoping to delay it until nobody's looking.
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I'm not sure. Every example in history I've seen where something has already been delayed 4 times doesn't bode well for a successful deal. I mean there's no doubt that ICANN *want* this to happen, I'm just not sure it actually will.
Alternatives (Score:2)
Transfer it to the control of the EFF, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Apache, OSI, FSF, etc. There are many non-profit orgs that could handle its management.
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Transfer it to the control of the EFF, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Apache, OSI, FSF, etc. There are many non-profit orgs that could handle its management.
None of them want the quarter-billion-plus debt that would come with such a transfer.
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quarter-billion-plus debt
How does one make a hole of $300M by assigning strings ending in ".org" to IP numbers? What am I missing here?
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If they're anything like ICANN itself, probably all those trips to Geneva for "work".
What debt? (Score:3)
You're confusing me -- what debt? The .ORG registry has been well run up until now. It has NO DEBT!
This is a Leveraged Buyout. Ethos Capital plans to put up the asserts of the .ORG registry as collateral for a loan of 300 million to fund its own purchase. This is done with the acquiescence of the seller -- the 'Internet Society', with approval of the ICANN board.
Here, a group of internet and nonprofit leaders have formed a nonprofit cooperative corporation that’s trying to stop the sale and run the .O
"private equity firm"? Not quite (Score:2)
It's some Australian bloke and his girlfriend. "Firm" is a gross exaggeration.
She's managed to borrow a load of money (not hard in recent time) on the promise that they're going to screw a shit load out of the domain renters to pay it back.
Anyone can do this sort of stuff if they know the right people to bribe.
What will Internet Society do with the $1.13B? (Score:2)