Who’s Going to Run .ORG? Billionaire Republicans.
I’ve just been sent a screenshot of an email. Not your regular every day email. The kind of email that makes you stop what you’re doing and just stare at your laptop.
Like, wait, is this actually reality? Is this really happening? And yes, it is. But you can’t quite believe it. So you just stare at your laptop for a bit.
Apparently, the email was sent to a public mailing list by Internet Society CEO Andrew Sullivan, who, also apparently, sees nothing wrong with this outcome.
It identifies the three families that have come together to buy .ORG. They are all American and they are all Republican.
The proud new owners of the .ORG domain are the Johnsons, the Perots and the Romneys.
Maybe it’s not the full picture. And who knows, maybe there’s some more investors Andrew hasn’t told us about. Like three rich democrats to make it a non-partisan billionaire cabal.
Maybe the Clintons and Bloombergs are in on it. Maybe someone will tell me I’ve got it all wrong. I hope so. What I do know is that as it stands the Internet Society’s vision is “The Internet is for Everyone”. Except for .ORG. That’s for billionaire republicans mostly.
We can do better. The millions of nonprofits who rely on .org deserve better. Can we count on you to help stop the sale of Public Interest Registry to a Private Equity Firm?
>> Yes! I will sign a letter to help stop the .ORG sale. Count me in! <<
Want to know more?
This is all about owning lots of domain names.
Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing also thinks this is a shit show.
Here is the email from Andrew:
