Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Petition launched to fight .org deal

Kevin Murphy, November 21, 2019, 09:21:54 (UTC), Domain Registries

A petition has been opened on Change.org calling for the acquisition of Public Interest Registry by Ethos Capital.
The petition calls on ICANN, the Internet Society and PIR to “suspend” the sale “pending an open, transparent and multi-stakeholder public process about the future of .ORG.”
It was started by Jacob Malthouse, who worked at ICANN over a decade ago but is perhaps better known more recently as a founder and co-CEO of Big Room, the .eco gTLD registry. He appears to have left that company in August.
He blogged last week expressing his dismay with the news of the acquisition.
“This is a very sad day for the progressive movement. We need infrastructure like this and we need it to stay run by and for nonprofits, where it can be managed in a transparent and accountable fashion,” he wrote.
Almost two days in, the petition has attracted a piddling 32 signatures. That’s about 1% of the number of people who chose to email ICANN to protest .org price increases earlier this year, voices that ICANN nevertheless found unpersuasive.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars at the least, was announced last week.

Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Comments (10)

  1. Leonid says:

    Please check out the URL for the pettion- redirect does not work.

  2. Mark Thorpe says:

    I signed the petition.

  3. Bud says:

    Go to DigitalLandGrab.org for the petition

  4. Bud says:

    A few powerful Republican families behind the secretive dot org purchase have reportedly been disclosed:
    https://medium.com/@jacobmalthouse/whos-going-to-run-org-in-a-word-the-gop-8809ef6f9679

    • Jacob Malthouse says:

      For clarity, I still don’t have independent confirmation of this. Only an email snapshot. I trust the source who sent it to me and would welcome independent confirmation.

  5. This petition is now merged with the broader campaign that just launched this morning:
    https://savedotorg.org/
    I’m supporting this campaign and urge all petition signers to support it as well.
    Save dot org!

  6. Bud says:

    The change.org petition is nearing 300 signatures.
    Now Savedotorg.org is carrying the torch onward: nearly thirty of the most recognized nonprofits around the world are calling for the sale of dot org to private equity to be stopped.
    (just a “piddling” thirty of the biggest nonprofit organizations and nonprofit groups)

  7. Bud says:

    More than 5,000 letters now sent to ISOC via savedotorg.org.
    Quite an outpouring of grassroots opposition.

  8. John Berryhill says:

    Oh, a petition. That’ll show ’em.
    This is the part of the musical where Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland get all of the neighborhood kids together to put on a show to raise money.
    How about a bake sale?
    We should form a non-profit organization to coordinate this thing, and put up a web site at… oh, shit.

Add Your Comment