For-profit firm seeking to run .org names makes concessions

LOS ANGELES — A private equity firm seeking to buy rights to operate the internet’s .org suffix said Friday it will cap price hikes and create an advisory board with veto powers to ease concerns from the nonprofit community.

Ethos Capital has offered $1.1 billion to buy the Public Interest Registry, the nonprofit corporation that runs the databases containing more than 10 million .org names registered worldwide. Organizations ranging from the Girl Scouts of the USA and Consumer Reports to the American Bible Society have opposed the sale, warning of potential price gouging and censorship. California’s attorney general and four congressional members have also requested information to evaluate a deal’s potential impact to nonprofits.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the concessions are enough to satisfy critics. The cap on price hikes, for instance, will expire in eight years, and most of the advisory board’s initial members will be appointed by the Public Interest Registry’s board.

Domain names such as apnews.com have historically been used by computers to find websites and send email, and their value grew as companies and groups adopted them for branding. The Associated Press, a nonprofit, also uses a .org domain, ap.org.

Though domain names are less prominent these days as more people reach websites using search engines and apps, they are still important for email addresses, billboards and other nondigital advertising.

The Public Interest Registry is currently owned by the Internet Society, a nonprofit founded by many of the internet’s early engineers and scientists. In that role, the registry collects annual fees of about $10 per .org registration. The Internet Society uses some of that revenue to fund advocacy and administrative programs, which include creating technical standards for the internet.

A sale to Ethos Capital wouldn’t immediately affect existing .org names or the websites that use them. Although .org is often associated with nonprofit organizations, it can already be registered by anyone, including for-profit corporations and individuals. That won’t change if it gets a for-profit owner.