dotorg.md - drewdevault.com - [mirror] blog and personal website of Drew DeVault

dotorg.md (6280B)

---
date: 2019-11-29
title: Take action to save .org and prosecute those who sold out the internet
layout: post
tags: [activism]
---
As many of you have no doubt heard, control of the .org registry has been sold
to private interests. There have been attempts to call them to reason, like
[Save .ORG](https://savedotorg.org/), but let's be realistic: they knew what
they're doing is wrong, the whole time. If they were a commercial entity, our
appeals would fall on deaf ears and that would be the end of it. But, they're
not a commercial entity - so our appeals may fall on deaf ears, but that doesn't
have to be the end of it.
The level of corruption on display by the three organizations involved in this
scam: ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ISOC (The
Internet Society), and PIR (Public Interest Registry), is astounding and very
illegal. If you are not familiar with the matter, click this to read a summary:
<details>
<summary>Summary of the corrupt privatization of .org</summary>

The governance of names on the internet is kind of complicated. ISOC
oversees a lot of activities in internet standards and governance, but their
role in this mess is as the parent company of PIR. PIR is responsible for
the .org registry, which oversees the governance of .org directly and
collects fees for every sale of a .org domain. ICANN is the broader
authority which oversees all domain allocation on the internet, and also
collects a fee for every domain sold. There's a complex web of documents and
procedures which govern these three organizations, and the name system as a
whole, and all three of them were involved in this process. Each of these
organizations is a non-profit, except for PIR, which in the course of this
deal is trying to convert to a B corp.


ICANN can set price limits on the sale of .org domains. In March of 2019,
they proposed removing these price caps entirely. During the period for
public comment, they received 3,300 comments against, and 6 in favor. On May
13, they removed these price caps anyway.


In November 2019, ISOC announced that they had approved the sale of PIR, the
organization responsible for .org, to Ethos Capital, for an unspecified
amount. According to
<a
href="https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/minutes/147"
rel="nofollow noopener"
>the minutes</a>, the decision to approve this sale was unanimously voted on
by the board. Additionally, it seems that Goldman Sachs had been involved in
the sale to some degree.


Fadi Chehadé became the CEO of ICANN in 2012. In 2016, he leaves his
position before it expires to start a consulting company, and he later joins
Abry Partners. One of the 3 partners is Erik Brooks. They later acquire
Donuts, a private company managing domains. Donuts co-founder Jon Nevett
becomes the CEO of PIR in December 2018. On May 7th, Chehadé registers
EthosCapital.com, and on May 13th ICANN decided to remove the price caps
despite 0.2% support from the public. On May 14th, the following day, Ethos
Capital was incorporated, with Brooks as the CEO. In November 2019, ISOC
approved the acquisition of PIR by Ethos Capital, a for-profit company.


These are the names of the criminals who sold the internet. If you want to
read more, <a
href="https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-ethos-capital-deal-timeline/"
rel="noopener"
>Private Internet Access</a> has a good write-up.

Okay, now let's talk about what you can do about it.
</details>
If you are familiar with the .org heist, then like me, you're probably pissed
off. Here's how you can take action: all of these organizations are 501c3
non-profits. The sale of a non-profit to a for-profit entity like this is
illegal without very specific conditions being met. Additionally, this kind of
behavior is not the sort the IRS likes to see in a tax-exempt organization.
Therefore, we can take the following steps to put a stop to this:
1. Write to the CA and VA attorney general offices encouraging them to
investigate the misbehavior of these three non-profits, which are
incorporated in their respective states.
2. File form 13909 with the IRS, encouraging them to review the organization's
non-profit status.
This kind of behavior is illegal. The sale of a non-profit requires a letter
from the Attorneys General in both California (ICANN) and Virginia (ISOC, PIR).
Additionally, much of this behavior qualifies as "self-dealing", or leveraging
one's power within an organization for their own benefit, rather than the
benefit of the organization. To report this, I've prepared a letter to the CA
and VA Attorney's General offices, which you can read here:
- [Letter to the Attorney General](https://yukari.sr.ht/ag-letter.pdf)
I encourage you to consider writing a letter of your own, but I would not
recommend copying and pasting this letter. However, this kind of behavior is
also illegal in the eyes of the IRS, and a form is provided for this purpose.
Form 13909 is the appropriate means for reporting this behavior. You can
download a pre-filled form here, and I do encourage you to submit one of this
yourself:
- [Form 13909 for ICANN and ISOC complaints (PDF)](https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.pdf)
- [Form 13909 for ICANN and ISOC complaints (ODG)](https://yukari.sr.ht/dotorg-form-13909.odg)
This only includes complaints for ICANN and ISOC, as PIR is seeking to lose its
non-profit status anyway. You can print out the PDF, fill in your details on
both pages, and mail it to the address printed on the form; or you can download
the ODG, open it up with LibreOffice Draw, and fill in the remaining details
digitally, then email it to the address shown on the page.[^1]
[^1]: Crash course in LibreOffice Draw: press F2, then click and drag to make a new textbox. Select text and use Ctrl+[ to reduce the font size to something reasonable. The red button on the toolbar along the top will export the result as a PDF.
Happy Thanksgiving! Funny how this all happened right when the American public
would be distracted...