01/10/2020

New Co-Op Aims to Take Over .Org Registry Operations

The nonprofit agency is against the domain registry's sale to Ethos

The recent debate over the announced sale of the .org top-level domain to a private-equity firm has led a number of prominent figures in the world of digital nonprofits to offer up an alternative solution.

This week, the group—which includes Esther Dyson, the founding chairwoman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—announced its efforts to create a co-op that would replace the existing organization structure for the management of .org. The Cooperative Corporation of .ORG Registrants, a nonprofit incorporated this week in California, wants to both stop the sale of .org to Ethos Capital and convince ICANN to let it manage the top-level domain instead.

“This is a better alternative,” Dyson, one of seven directors of the new group, told The New York Times this week. “If you’re owned by private equity, your incentive is to make a profit. Our incentive is to serve and protect nonprofits and the public.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.