John,

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

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-proposed-sale-of-the-tld-puts-org-registrant-data-at-risk/

Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.