If you are a non-profit organization then your .ORG domain.
In November 2018, non-profit organizations around the world were shocked by the Internet Society's (ISOC) decision to sell the Public Interest Registry , which operates the domain, to a private firm, Ethos Capital.
The EFF and other well-known organizations raised the alarm and wrote to the ISOC to stop the sale. What followed was perhaps the most dramatic expression of solidarity from the nonprofit sector ever. And we won.
Prior to this announcement, the EFF spent six months voicing its concerns to ICANN about the 2019 .ORG Registry Agreement, which gave .ORG owners new powers to censor nonprofit websites (the agreement also lifted the long-standing ceiling on the maximum cost of registering and renewing.
The agreement gave the owner of .ORG the right to implement the processes of suspension of domain names on charges of “activities contrary to applicable law”. It effectively created a new pressure point that repressive governments, corporations and other bad actors can use to silence their critics without trial. This should have alarmed all nonprofits, especially those operating under repressive regimes or frequently criticizing powerful corporations.
Navigation through the maze of ICANN's decision-making structure continued for six months. Nobody knew when ISOC would sell PIR. In this case, fears of censorship and domain commercialization would become much stronger. Power was placed in the hands of a commercial company, whose main task was to make money for its investors.
Nonprofit oversight has always been part of the plan for .ORG. When ISOC argued over the management contract for the TLD in 2002 , it used its non-profit status to its advantage. Then ISOC President Lynn St. Amour said PIR would be able to leverage "the vast resources of ISOC's global network for its policy and governance."
More and more organizations began to pay attention to this. By the end of 2019, more than 500 organizations and 18,000 individuals had signed our letter, including well-known companies such as Greenpeace, Consumer Reports, Oxfam and the YMCA. At the same time , questions began to arise, can Ethos Capital make a profit at all without any radical policy changes for .ORG.
By the beginning of 2020, the financial picture became clearer: Ethos Capital offered $ 1.135 billion, of which almost a third of the loan funds. Regardless of Ethos Capital's original intentions, a commercial firm would be tempted to sell "censorship as a service" for profit anyway. Public concerns are well founded: In 2016, registry operator Donuts struck a private deal with the Motion Picture Association to expedite the blocking of domains that allegedly infringe on the copyright of MPA members. It's fair to say that PIR will be doing a similar practice under the direction of Donuts co-founder Jonathan Nevett. Six Members of Congress in January wrote a letter to ICANN calling for a more thorough study of the issue of selling the domain zone.
A few days later, EFF, NTEN, a nonprofit advocacy group, and digital rights groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress attended a rally in front of ICANN's Los Angeles headquarters . Our message was simple: stop the sale and guarantee protection to nonprofits . Before the protest, ICANN staff asked the organizers to meet in person, but on the day of the protest, ICANN canceled the meeting. That same week, Amnesty International, Access Now, The Sierra Club and others held a press conference at the World Economic Forum to educate world leaders about this a sale that threatens civil society . All this noise caught the attention of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who wrote a letter to ICANN asking for key information on the deal.
Realizing the intensity of the passion, Ethos Capital and PIR hastily tried to negotiate with the nonprofit sector. Ethos Capital tried to organize a secret meeting with leaders of civil society organizations in February and then abruptly canceled it. Ethos then announced that it would limit the rise in prices for domain registrations and renewals, as well as create a "board of trustees." But it was unclear what impact the board of trustees would have on PIR's decisions in the event of a sale. EFF CEO Cindy Cohn and NTEN CEO Amy Sample Ward responded in The Nonprofit Times :
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Even Ethos's promise to restrict price increases was rather empty: even with such a restriction, the registration price will more than double in eight years, and after these eight years the restrictions will no longer be in effect.
All the while, Ethos and PIR continued to insist that the new owner would have new "products and services" for .ORG registrants , but did not provide any information on what the offer was. Cohn and Ward replied like this:
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It is symbolic that the .ORG debate has come to a head just as COVID-19 has come to the fore as a major global concern. Emergencies like this are the time when the world relies most on nonprofits; therefore, these situations are a kind of test for us . The crisis showed that the community does not need fancy “products and services” from the domain registry: it needs a simple, reliable, boring service. The very same members of Congress who scrutinized the .ORG sale wrote a sharper letter to ICANN in March... They directly noted that Ethos Capital will not be able to profit from investments unless it makes serious changes to the rules of the domain zone to the detriment of public organizations.
Finally, in April 2020,
the ICANN board rejected the sale of the domain zone : “ICANN has made PIRs responsible for serving the public interest in the operation of the .ORG registry,” they wrote, “and we are now being asked to transfer this trust to a new organization with no mandate to defend the public interest ".
For now .ORG remains safe, but the general tendency to stifle free speech through domain registrars is as big a problem as ever. This is why the EFF is urging ICANN to review its policyRegarding the rule of observing the public interest on the part of registry operators (registry voluntary commitments). These are additional rules that ICANN allows registries to establish for specific top-level domains, similar to the new provisions in the .ORG Registry Agreement , which allows the domain zone owner to set rules for accelerated censorship on the Internet.
The story of the assassination attempt on .ORG is actually the story of the power of the non-profit sector. Every time Ethos and PIR tried to stifle public reaction with empty promises, the sector responded even louder, winning votes from government officials, members of Congress, two UN special rapporteurs and regulators for US government charities . As I told the crowd of activists in front of the ICANN office, I have worked in the nonprofit sector for most of my adult life and have never seen everyone react so unanimously to anything.
Thanks to everyone who stood up for .ORG, especially NTEN for partnering with this campaign. If you were one of the 27,183 people who signed our open letter, if you work or support one of the 871 organizations that took part in this public campaign , then you were part of this victory. Thank you!
This is one of a series of articles on our fight for digital rights in 2020.