After the sale of Public Interest Registry (PIR), the nonprofit corporation which maintains the .ORG domain to private equity firm Ethos Capital in November 2019, a group of internet and non-profit leaders have filed incorporation papers to form a new entity to stop the sale. Called the Cooperative Corporation of .ORG Registrants, the non-profit will demand the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees internet domain names, to hand over the management of the .ORG domain to the group. This was first reported by The New York Times. Members: The new non-profit entity reportedly has 7 directors, including Esther Dyson, the former founding chairman of ICANN, Katherine Maher, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit group that operates Wikipedia), and William Woodcock, the executive director of Packet Clearing House (a non-profit that provides operational support for domains). Former founding president of ICANN, Michael Roberts, Jeff Ubois (a philanthropist) are also among the directors, according to Reuters. Advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also reportedly supporting the initiative. What they said: Maher told Reuters that the objective of the new non-profit entity isn’t to make a competing bid to acquire .ORG, but to manage the domain for security and to ensure that it doesn’t become a tool of censorship. Dyson told NY Tīmes that the non-profit cooperative corporation’s aim is to “serve and protect nonprofits and the public,” whereas being owned by a private entity means that making profit is an incentive. “This is a better alternative,” she added. Woodcock reportedly said that…
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