As pressure builds over .org sell-off, internet governance bodies fall back into familiar pattern: Silence

The fact that there wasn’t a discussion outside the confines of the boards of ISOC and PIR – the outfit that manages the registry and is wholly owned by ISOC – was very deliberate, many feel. If there had been a discussion, they argue, the internet community would never have allowed it to happen.

Then came the news that ISOC had decided to sell the registry to Ethos Capital, an unknown private equity firm that had been established only months earlier.

It quickly became apparent that Ethos Capital was likely the brainchild of a former CEO of ICANN, Fadi Chehade, who had been largely responsible for pushing free-market economics into the internet registry market and now appeared to be using that knowledge to profit from one of its oldest institutions.