The Sale of .ORG, Trust, and Community-Based Organizations

In November 2019, the Internet Society (ISOC) sold the .ORG registry (Public Interest Registry) to private-equity company Ethos Capital for $1.135 billion. Though the sale seems inevitable, NTEN has engaged over 13,000 people to endorse a letter to oppose the sale. What questions and concerns does the sale of .ORG registry raise for non-profit and community-based organizations? Beyond the commercial and legal concerns being raised around the sale of .ORG, I think there are critical questions to ask around the theme of trust. Whereas trust in many outlets and platforms erodes, trust in many community-based organizations, and particularly public libraries, hold strong. With this trust comes power. While we do not know how the new owners of .ORG will use or abuse their power, we should ask ourselves what we do with ours.

[Allister Chang is a Robert Bosch Stiftung Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute]