The Internet Society (ISOC) has sold .org to Ethos, a brand new private equity company, after the price caps for the domain were removed. With this move ISOC both betrays its own mission and .org website holders. The role of ISOC is to promote a public interest internet: instead it has contributed to the excessive commercialization of the Internet.
Some of you might not be familiar with the acronym soup of Internet governance: PIR, ISOC, DNS, ICANN, TLDs. But all of you are familiar with one acronym: .org. Since the establishment of the Domain Name System, .org – the part of the Internet infrastructure that translated domain names (such as https://opendemocracy.net) into IP addresses (such as 104.18.36.32) – has been the home for not-for-profit organizations, hence its name. This Top Level Domain has been managed by the Public Internet Registry since 2003, which was established to funnel part of the revenues to sustain The Internet Society (ISOC). With this funding, The Internet Society is supposed to act like a guardian of the free and open Internet.
ISOC's mission, according to its website, is to 'support and promote the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people’s lives, and a force for good in society.' Selling off a part of the Internet aimed at not-for-profits, to private equity, right after the limitation to increase the costs for such domains has been removed, hardly seems 'for the good of society'. And if it were so, why did this deal take place in secret? Aside from that, ISOC has also severed the direct link that it has had with non-proft organizations.
