icann • Nuclear Bits

Third Level .name Termination by VeriSign

Neil Fraser, writing on his blog:

On 15 April 2026 Verisign proposed the destruction of the entire 3rd level of the ‘.name’ hierarchy in order to simplify their administration. Astonishingly, on 28 July 2026 ICANN approved this action.

and

So what does this mean? First, this website vanishes in February. Despite the fact that it’s registered and paid for until 2040. Second, my email address also disappears. Third, all the IoT devices that use services on this domain become bricks. Basically, I disappear from the Internet.

This is wild, and a good reminder that nothing on the internet is permanent. Your entire internet presence is largely controlled by large organizations and is at the the whims of people sitting in executive chairs who don’t have even an iota of understanding the effects of their actions.

I hope that VeriSign thinks this through.

ICANN Rejects .ORG Sale to Ethos Capital

I completely missed this update earlier this week. ICANN announced that it has categorically rejected the sale of the .org domain registry to Ethos Capital — a private equity firm.

Karen Gullo and Mitch Stoltz, writing for the EFF:

We’re glad ICANN listened to the many voices in the nonprofit world urging it not to support the sale of Public Interest Registry, which runs .ORG, to private equity firm Ethos Capital. The proposed buyout was an attempt by domain name industry insiders to profit off of thousands of nonprofits and NGOs around the world. Saying the sale would fundamentally change PIR into an “entity bound to serve the interests of its corporate stakeholders” with “no meaningful plan to protect or serve the .ORG community,” ICANN made clear that it saw the proposal for what it was, regardless of Ethos’ claims that nonprofits would continue to have a say in their future. “ICANN entrusted to PIR the responsibility to serve the public interest in its operation of the .ORG registry,” they wrote, “and now ICANN is being asked to transfer that trust to a new entity without a public interest mandate.”

All’s well that ends well, I guess.