LOS ANGELES – 16 April 2020 – On 14 November 2019, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was notified that the Internet Society planned to sell the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to Ethos Capital. Since that time, the ICANN organization and Board have worked together to thoughtfully and thoroughly evaluate the proposed acquisition to ensure that the .ORG registry, which represents more than 10.5 million domains, remains secure, reliable, and stable.
Since January, we have been providing information and fully cooperating with the California Attorney General's review. We appreciate receiving the Attorney General's letter and are carefully reviewing and considering it as part of our evaluation of the change of control and PIR's entity conversion. Throughout this process, we have listened carefully to the community, and have demanded more safeguards and greater transparency from PIR.
The Attorney General's letter does not take into account the recent work that PIR has done to make the entity more responsible to the community. ICANN requested that PIR strengthen the Public Interest Commitments to ensure meaningful enforceability; a draft of the revised PICs has been provided to the ICANN Board.
We have agreed to extend the review period to 4 May 2020, to permit additional time to complete our review.
About ICANN
ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.