California Attorney General Delays .Org Sale to Private Equity Firm ⇥ domainnamewire.com

You may remember that, in November, the Internet Society decided to sell the entire .org domain registry to a sketchy private equity firm without any oversight or approval whatsoever.

Well, California’s Attorney General would like some answers about that. Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire:

In a letter to ICANN (pdf), the attorney general has demanded responses to 35 questions and information requests. About half of the questions relate to ICANN’s decision to remove price caps on .org domain names. If it gets the answers it demands, it will get much more information than ICANN has previously disclosed about the process and thinking behind removing price caps on .org domain names last year.

The Attorney General’s letter is thorough, and ICANN indicates that it intends to respond at the end of next week. ICANN has also said that it wants approval for the sale to be delayed from February 17 to April 20.

One hopes that it will be declined and this exploitation of not-for-profits and charitable organizations will cease.