{"id":6242,"date":"2019-11-27T08:27:57","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T08:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.icdsoft.com\/blog\/?p=6242"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T08:15:09","slug":"the-org-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.icdsoft.com\/blog\/the-org-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"The .ORG Controversy, or How a Private Equity Company Will Manage a Nonprofit TLD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A private equity company called Ethos Capital acquired the .ORG registry<\/strong> organization in November 2019 and will soon run the second most popular<\/strong> top-level domain in the world. This may have great implications on the World Wide Web as we know it and will most likely affect any person or organization that uses a .org domain name. For the first time, a for-profit entity<\/strong> will be in charge of an extension that was launched in 1985 with the intention to be used by nonprofit organizations. Even worse, ICANN, the nonprofit corporation that manages the global domain name system, recently lifted the price cap<\/strong> on the .org extension. This happened a few months before the registry acquisition, leaving domain registrars and industry observers in doubt whether there is a bigger plan behind the curtain which was known only to a handful of people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the biggest news stories in the online world for the past several years. It all started in March 2019 when ICANN started a public discussion<\/a> on a possible price cap removal for .org domains. In case you missed anything, you can read our summary and catch up with all key points of this developing story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key players<\/p><\/div>

- ICANN \u2013 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a nonprofit organization that manages the domain name system. It adopts and enforces policies as to how the domain names should work, who should manage them, etc. It also designates registry operators to provide registration services and to keep the master database for each specific top-level domain (TLD).\u00a0<\/p>

- PIR \u2013 Public Internet Registry is a nonprofit organization that has been managing the .org top-level domain since 2002. It was created by the Internet Society (ISOC) - another nonprofit aiming at the development and security of Internet standards and the adoption of new online technologies in science and education.\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How the story unfolded<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In March 2019, ICANN proposed a new registry agreement extension to PIR for the management of the .org TLD, which would effectively remove the price cap for the extension. Under the old agreement, which is still in effect for other gTLDs like .com, .net, .info and .biz<\/strong>, domain registries are allowed to increase the price of the extension they manage by no more than 10 percent <\/strong>per year. ICANN justified their proposal by saying the new agreement will be in line with the agreements they have signed in the last several years for more than 1200 new TLDs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n