Do affected parties have recourse? Yes : Drew DeVault suggests state and federal options .

Other than polite letters, do any responses have teeth? Maybe: Official complaints have been filed, but don’t expect results. Chronic optimists can .. take part in ICANN and ISOC governance

Has anyone currently at ICANN + ISOC made substantive comment? Yes : Richard Barnes, ISOC trustee, explains why he voted to sell .org

Vint Cerf said: ‘Hard to imagine $60/year would be a deal breaker for even small non-profits.‘ How did we get to Net pioneers embracing 99% profit margins?



For more backstory, read on…



A brief history of .org

In 1993, Network Solutions was awarded an NSF contract to run the non-governmental top-level domains [TLDs]. In 1998 ICANN was established to develop a competitive marketplace of registrars, and implemented the first version of vertical separation: distinguishing registries from registrars.

Verisign acquired Network Solutions, including both its registry and its consumer-facing registrars, in 2000. At the time, ICANN required structural but not legal separation between the two. In 2001, ICANN began requiring legal separation between registry and registrar for all new registries.

The next 7 generic TLDs were also appoved and began to be introduced in 2001.

The original non-profit registry : the Public Interest Registry

.com registry, Verisign agreed to give up .org . A public bid and review ensued, which was won by the Internet Society ( In 2003, as part of a deal with ICANN to ensure it could renew its control of theregistry, Verisign agreed to give up. A public bid and review ensued, which was won by the Internet Society ( ISOC ), a non-profit dedicated to the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all. Their winning bid was to stand up a new 501c3 to manage the domain, which they called the Public Interest Registry ( PIR ).

The non-profit nature of ISOC and PIR was central to their winning the bid. PIR gave ISOC a portion of every registration; in time this became the dominant source of funds for ISOC — over 90% of ISOC’s current $50MM budget.

The acquisition of a plurality of registries by four people

In 2010, under Rod Beckstrom, ICANN began pursuing an aggressive expansion of generic TLDs, which was eventually reviewed by the US Senate in 2012. In November 2010, ICANN reversed its policy on vertical separation, allowing new registries to own registrars. Separately, mega-registry Donuts.com was founded by people who had been fighting for this change, with the mission of acquiring new TLDs. In 2012, the nature of ICANN’s work transformed: the launch of the expanded TLD program quadrupled its total assets under management, by creating a new pool of funds from the Global Domains program. They invested this via their own small investment group, and have gradually moved funds into an ICANN reserve fund. Beckstrom stepped down, and ICANN COO Akram Atallah briefly took over as interim CEO before his childhood friend Fadi Chehadé joined as CEO from 2012-2016. Under Chehadé, Atallah became president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division (now their cash cow). From 2014 to 2016, the number of available gTLDs was expanded dramatically, from under 100 to around 1400 in all.

Musical chairs In May 2015, Chehadé announced he would leave ICANN the next March, after completing work to end US oversight of IANA. He started his own consultancy and joined Abry Partners, a Boston-based equity firm (no scare quotes) where Erik Brooks (HBS) was one of 3 managing partners. Both are well connected in academia as in business, and advisors or fellows of the Kennedy, Belfer, and Shorenstein centers. In March 2016, Göran Marby became ICANN CEO.

In July 2016, Verisign (via a proxy) purchased .web for $135M. In May 2018, ISOC appointed three new trustees to PIR, replacing outgoing trustees (a regular occurrence). Later that month Brian Cute, PIR’s CEO of 7 years, resigned suddenly, with no explanation. One of the new trustees took over as interim CEO.

In June 2018, Andrew Sullivan, former chair of the IETF’s internet architecture board, was appointed CEO of ISOC, starting in September. In September 2018, Chehadé (then a partner or senior advisor at Abry, depending on who you ask), helped Abry close their acquisition of a majority stake in Donuts. Donuts by then had raised $300M and spent much of it buying some 250 TLDs. Brooks took a board seat at Donuts.

Jon Nevett (HLS), stepped down. Brooks In October 2018, Donuts co-founder and chief counsel(HLS), stepped down. Brooks replaced the Donuts CEO with… Akram Atallah.

In December 2018, Nevett became the new CEO of PIR, responsible for .org .

The announcement highlighted his commitment to its non-profit ideals.

The .org heist

Lifting the price cap In January 2019, as part of the scheduled renewal negotiations between ICANN and the registries for .org , .biz , and .info , PIR requested that price caps on their domains be removed. ICANN proposed basing a renewal agreements on the new Base Registry Agreement now used with new generic TLDs, which includes ‘Uniform Rapid Suspension‘, PIR agreed to this. (NB: there is disagreement about who first requested removal of price caps here) The EFF wrote a compelling summary of why these changes did not make sense for the large historical registries. On March 18 2019, ICANN invited comments on the idea of lifting price caps for .org . PIR’s non-profit status and history were touted as central reasons not to worry. They received more comments (3,300) than they had on almost any other decision, uniformly opposed to the change (98% opposed; 2% unclear, 0.2% in support.) Oppositions came from registrars, NGOs, and people across the globe. On May 1st, comments closed, and PIR responded with an open letter that said [paraphrasing]: ‘We could already be raising prices 10% a year, and have not… You would get 6 months notice of any price change… We are a mission-based non-profit, and would never betray the trust that you have put into .ORG and us.‘ After the acquisition announcement in November, PIR’s public letter projected “annual price increases of up to 10 percent on average“, which is… not exactly the same. Less optimistic, the Internet Commerce Association wrote a detailed letter to ICANN summarizing the risks, fragilities, and potential worst-case scenarios involved in lifting the price caps. Registrar Namecheap submitted a strongly principled request for reconsideration to ICANN asking them to change their mind; and updated it in November when the sale was revealed.

Decision In summarizing the comments later, ICANN constructed its own reality, saying: “there was a group that opposed lifting price caps, but it is not true that ‘the community’ was ‘strongly opposed’ to lifting them.” The Internet Governance Project offers an insiders view of how one might justify ignoring the 99%. In rejecting Namecheap’s complaint in November, the ICANN board said unhelpfully, “ICANN org’s Core Values do not require it to accede to each request or demand made in public comments“. On May 7th, Chehadé registered the domain for EthosCapital.com. On May 13th, ICANN decided to lift the price caps anyway. The decision was made by ICANN staff, not its board, evading the obligation to publicly carry out due diligence and explain board decisions.

On May 14th, Ethos Capital was incorporated as a new Boston-based “investment firm”, founded by Brooks — who stepped down from running the 60-person team at Abry to do so. Ethos Capital has two staff: Brooks and Nora Abusitta-Ouri, a former ICANN SVP who later worked for Chehadé. In June, Kevin Ohashi wrote about regulatory capture at ICANN, noting that the organization was coming to represent only a few influential registries, not its other constituents. At the end of June, ICANN and PIR signed the new .org registry contract (renewing PIR’s license, using the new agreement template).

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