Why You Should Care About Losing .ORG.
I woke up this morning feeling a profound sense of loss. It’s a beautiful frost covered morning here in the Pacific Northwest. The sun is at a low angle, streaking through the tall evergreens.
My two kids are happily off to school. Our lovely dog Maggie is at my feet. There’s warm coffee beside me. Some house music on. Life is good. And yet, it’s not.
I’ve spend the better part of two decades thinking about sustainability. The essential notion of anything environmental is connection to the land. How we interact with the great and wondrous natural system that surrounds us.
So when I think about the Internet, it’s hard not to see it through the same lens. The Internet, especially when it comes to domain names and websites, is really just land.
Sure it’s online, but it’s land nonetheless. Your website & domain is really the only thing you can own online. Just like real land, how we decide to run it is a reflection of us.
“A website is really the only thing you can own online.”
Should we protect any of it? Is some part of it more meaningful, simply because of how it looks?
It’s easy to forget now that the very concept of the intrinsic beauty and value of land used to be foreign to us. It took tireless advocates like John Muir, who, when he first visited Yosemite:
“was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower”
Muir looked at Yosemite and saw something more than just a large pile of granite. He saw inspiration. He saw connection. He saw a symbol of something that could inspire us to be greater than ourselves.
Now imagine if you lived in Muir’s time. He had spent decades promoting Yosemite. He’d founded a movement to change our relationship to and understanding of the land.
Then, one day, he announced that he’d joined a group that had sold Yosemite. It had become so valuable from all the tourist money, you see. That money stream could be wrapped up into a recurring revenue package and sold as an annuity.
Yosemite was now a financial instrument. John would naturally make the case that he’d had a big payout. That he’d use the money to help protect other lands around the world.
But, the fundamental principle behind all his work had been compromised. He had revealed that what really mattered to him was profits, not principle.
That’s why I’m sad. We’ve lost more than .org. We’ve lost more than a digital Yosemite. We’ve lost our principles. 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!
