The Girl Scouts of America and the YMCA have joined numerous organizations, protesting the sale of PIR – the Registry for .ORG domains – to Ethos Capital.
According to a BBC article, the Internet Society has been sent almost 7,000 letters asking it to halt the sale of PIR to Ethos, as part of a campaign coordinated by the SaveDotOrg website.
Among the organizations to have sent them are the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, the National Council of Non-Profits, the Wikimedia Foundation and the American Alliance of Museums, as well as the Girl Scouts of America and the YMCA.
The letters set out fears of “significant harm to the global NGO sector” due to:
- Increases in the price of domains
- Censorship
- Arbitrary decisions to shut down websites
For the full BBC coverage on the .ORG and PIR debacle involving Ethos Capital, click here.
Every one of those nonprofits and every domain investor who has purchased dot orgs has contributed to the success of that extension. Now ISOC is selling them out and keeping all the money for itself. Rather than create a rinky-dink community enablement fund to pay off (reward) organizations, it should pay a special dividend from the proceeds of the sale to all dot org holders past and present. That would be a decent way to thank them for their role in the extension’s success. Instead, ISOC is keeping it all for themselves. I guess nonprofits can be greedy too.