.Org Domain Sale Under Review

ICANN has announced that the sale of .org domain manager is on hold pending review.

I'm not surprised. This seems to a be a classic example of self dealing, and the folks at ICANN and the Internet Society giving benefits to themselves and their friends, and they figured out that no one would know until it is too late.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the rest of us it quickly blew up into a complete sh%$ storm, and now they are trying to put a gloss of due diligence on this:

ICANN is reviewing the pending sale of the .org domain manager from a nonprofit to a private equity firm and says it could try to block the transfer.

The .org domain is managed by the Public Internet Registry (PIR), which is a subsidiary of the Internet Society, a nonprofit. The Internet Society is trying to sell PIR to private equity firm Ethos Capital.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) said last week that it sent requests for information to PIR in order to determine whether the transfer should be allowed. "ICANN will thoroughly evaluate the responses, and then ICANN has 30 additional days to provide or withhold its consent to the request," the organization said.

ICANN, which is also a nonprofit, previously told the Financial Times that it "does not have authority over the proposed acquisition," making it seem like the sale was practically a done deal. But even that earlier statement gave ICANN some wiggle room. ICANN "said its job was simply to 'assure the continued operation of the .org domain'—implying that it could only stop the sale if the stability and security of the domain-name infrastructure were at risk," the Financial Times wrote on November 28.

In its newer statement last week, ICANN noted that the .org registry agreement between PIR and ICANN requires PIR to "obtain ICANN's prior approval before any transaction that would result in a change of control of the registry operator."

The registry agreement lets ICANN request transaction details "including information about the party acquiring control, its ultimate parent entity, and whether they meet the ICANN-adopted registry operator criteria (as well as financial resources, and operational and technical capabilities)," ICANN noted. ICANN's 30-day review period begins after PIR provides those details.

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The pending sale comes a few months after ICANN approved a contract change that eliminates price caps on .org domain names. The sale has raised concerns that Ethos Capital could impose large price hikes.

Of course it can raise prices.  It WILL raise prices.  That's why the offer waited until the price caps were repealed.

You can see my earlier post, and a summary of the corruption and self-dealing, here.

I'm still wondering why there is not a criminal RICO investigation going on over this.