.org under threat! - SAVED - for now!

Don't know how I missed this:

https://www.eff.org/event/savedotorg-protest-icann

I have never heard of a petition effectively preventing someone from getting their way. For example, there was a story about some corporate douchbag with a lot of money, who wanted to buy land to put apartments on. The neighbors were filled with anger, so they started a petition. But nothing they did made any difference, as the bulldozers were on site and about to work the land.

It wasn't till the last minute till one of them discovered that it was a historical site, and brought the evidence to the construction zone, that got them to stop. The moral of the story? The petitions didn't do a thing, white collar cared nothing about it, and they weren't going to sway them. What did? A governmental law regarding historical sites. If he had started working the land, he could have been brought up on serious charges.

And in the end, .ORG can't be bought unless they allow themselves to be. If the money looks lucrative enough, oh believe me, they will sell. I seriously doubt that they have any serious love towards their own domain. This is just how the world works, make a big enough offer, you become a sell out.

I have never heard of a petition effectively preventing someone from getting their way.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Always follow the dollar sign to find the results.

This from my inbox today:

We have until May 5 to stop the sale of the .org domain to a private capital firm. Can you chip in now to protect the websites of more than 10 million organizations working for the public good?

Ethos Capital, a private equity firm, is trying to purchase control of the .org domain from the Internet Society, a nonprofit that was founded to protect the public interest as the Internet evolves. If this sale goes through it would impact Fight for the Future, and also many organizations working on the front-lines of the pandemic response, like the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, and the United Nations.

This is the worst time for this sale to go through, with the coronavirus pandemic putting the financial security of nonprofits and charities in danger. Ethos Capital could raise the price of registering and maintaining a domain. Right now, when organizations are operating on razor-thin margins, any increases in cost could be disastrous.

Can you chip in right now to help ramp up our campaign to protect the .org domain, and more than 10 million organizations that rely on it?

DONATE - www.fightforthefuture.org/donate/

This isn’t not just about increasing prices. Ethos could do any number of terrible things:

They would have access to the registration information for all organizations with a .org website. Ethos could sell this information to authoritarian states that want to silence dissent, or to groups that want to stop certain human rights efforts, putting these organizations and the people behind them in danger.1

They could censor groups by booting them off their domain—or even shut down all .org websites entirely.

They could start selling off .org web domains to anyone who wants them, without regard for the intended meaning of the domain

We’ve been fighting this sale for months now—along with other organizations we collected tens of thousands of petitions from individuals calling for a stop to this sale and held a rally and press conference outside the Internet Society’s meeting in the fall to show opposition.

This opposition is working, and the decision has been postponed until May 4. This gives us a few more days to make sure the Internet Society gets the message: selling the .org domain would be a disaster for organizations fighting to make the world a better place.

While we always depend on our websites, it’s now the main tool for organizations to connect with people. We cannot rely on a profit-driven entity to put the interests of nonprofit organizations working to make the world a better place first. If you can, please make a donation to help protect the websites of tens of millions of organizations.

Together for our Internet,

Caitlin at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

1. Access Now: https://www.accessnow.org/warning-propo ... a-at-risk/

Update! .org has been saved ... for now!

"Hi J,

This is great news: The Internet society just announced that they will not sell the .org domain to the private equity firm Ethos Capital!1,2

This means that (for now) the websites of more than 10 million organizations working to make the world a better place are safe.

To everyone who took action or donated to support this campaign: thank you!

This is a perfect example of how organizing works. This sale was as good as done, and some people thought we didn’t have a chance. But because hundreds of organizations and thousands of people got involved, signed petitions, participated in our protest, and took other actions to show their opposition, we won.

And this win couldn’t have come at a more important time—when nonprofit and charitable organizations have been forced to work online and are relying heavily on their websites to connect with their members and supporters.

While we celebrate this victory, we’ll also remain vigilant. The Internet Society can still sell the .org domain, and while it has said it wants to find a trusted nonprofit entity to manage the domain, we will need to pay attention and make sure that’s really what happens.

We’ll never stop fighting to protect the Internet. If you can, please support his work with a donation today.

DONATE

Thanks for all you do,

Caitlin at Fight for the Future

Footnotes:

1. ICANN: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-b ... gistry-pir

2. Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... cann-ethos"