.org registry rights sold to private equity firm

Earlier this month, the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that it has sold the rights to the .org registry to a Ethos Capital, a private equity firm that was founded just a couple of months ago. The move is causing quite a panic as the .org registry always operated on a non-profit basis. This top-level domain has over 10 million registrants and has become synonymous with non-profit entities.

The Register offers some in-depth coverage over here. A lot of folks are feeling betrayed because a longstanding non-profit registry suddenly turned into a for-profit organisation with an unlimited ability to raise prices. It definitely looks like owners of .org domains are going to get milked:

More recent decisions by ICANN also had a significant bearing on the decision to sell the .org registry. At the end of June this year, in a controversial decision made despite significant and vocal opposition, ICANN decided to lift price caps on .org domains for the next 10 years, paving the way for unlimited price increases on the 10 million .org domain names. That decision massively increased the value of the .org registry from millions to potentially billions of dollars.