The .org domain taken over for $1.1 billion

Ten post dostępny jest także w języku: polski

Internet Society, the organization managing the PIR (Public Interest Registry), or .org domain registry, has decided to sell it to Ethos Capital’s investment fund for $1.135 billion. It is very likely that the rights to the .org domain will be revoked to organisations with pirated content.

Price increases highly probable

The transaction, as well as the prior consent for the lifting of the .org domain price cap issued by ICANN, an organization that oversees the global domain market, has been causing great excitement in the online world for several months now. Critics of this movement argue that giving up the .org domain to a commercial company, which until now has been used mainly by various non-profit organizations, means abandoning the idea behind the creation of this domain. They are afraid of increases and the revocation of the right to use this domain to many of its current users.

“Increases for .org users are practically inevitable, but they shouldn’t be drastic. The new registry owner has already announced that although he intends to preserve the spirit behind the .org domain, he is also planning a slight price increase – an average of 10% per year for maintaining the domain. Further price increases would be very risky for Ethos Capital, as there is a huge competition on the domain market, and users can use not only top level domains such as .org or .com, but also domains with atypical extensions, which have been gaining popularity very quickly recently,” comments Elżbieta Kornaś from Domeny.pl.

Providers of illegal content to be revocated

Putting the .org domain in private hands may result in the revocation of the right to use this domain for some of its current users, mainly with illegal content. “The entertainment industry has been agreeing with private registries for years and forcing the removal of sites that provide copyrighted material, usually without a prior court ruling. Until now, PIR has been indifferent to such pressures, but it is hard to expect that the new private owner will continue this policy,” says Elżbieta Kornaś.

Currently, over 10 million .org domains are registered on the Internet, which makes it the seventh most popular top-level domain in the world, after .com (145.1 million), .tk (27 million), .cn (14.8 million), .de (14.7 million), .net (13.3 million) and .uk (11 million).

H88 Group has 230,000 customers

Domeny.pl is a company specializing in domain registration (over 1000 extensions). The second area of company’s specialization is SSL certificates.  Domeny.pl is a part of the H88 group, one of the largest and fastest growing webhosting companies in Poland. Other companies belonging to the group are Hekko.pl, Linuxpl.com and Kei.pl. H88 services are used by about 230 thousand clients.