Members of US Congress ask ICANN to halt the sale of .org

Six members of the US Congress have sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), urging the organisation to reject the sale of the .org registry to Ethos capital. Such a sale, it is argued, ‘is against the public interest and would violate ICANN’s commitment to ‘preserve and enhance … the operational stability, reliability, security … and openness of the DNS and the Internet’. Other reasons outlined in favour of stopping the sale include: Ethos Capital has not made a meaningful commitment to operate .org in the public interest; the new owners of the PIR registry would have new incentives and new power to raise .org fees, monetise .org registry data, and censor the Internet; the proposed sale saddles PIR with debt, and it is not clear how PIR would alleviate its financial burden.