Public Interest Registry Replies to ICANN Queries on Deal
Not much about Public Interest Registry will change after its sale to Ethos Capital, the registry told ICANN in a response published Saturday. In December, ICANN queried PIR, its owner the Internet Society and buyer Ethos about the continuity of…
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registry operations, nature of the proposed transaction, how the proposed new ownership structure would comply with the current registry agreement, and how the parties intend to keep their promises to serve the .org community (see 1912090002). PIR said its proposed change from the nonprofit "Public Interest Registry, a Pennsylvania corporation" to the for-profit "Public Interest Registry, LLC" won't amount to the creation of a new entity under law and that all of PIR's current debt, obligations and other liabilities will continue. If anything, PIR said, the transaction wouldn't jeopardize security of registry operations and "the infusion of outside resources only acts to strengthen PIR's position in the competitive marketplace." Management will remain and "continue to operate the business of PIR in a manner consistent with past practices in furtherance of the .ORG community," and back-end operations will still be served by Afilias. PIR noted many ICANN questions came from the new generic top-level domain applicants' guidebook and "do not apply to a fully functioning, legacy gTLD registry operator." PIR denied it knew ISOC was looking to sell the registry at the time the .org registry agreement was being renegotiated. The final version was posted in March, and PIR didn't know the registry was potentially for sale until July, it said. It wasn't aware until September that ISOC was considering an offer, and "was not involved in any process ISOC may have run with regards to the potential sale of the .ORG registry prior to" that time. ICANN doesn't have a timeline for making a decision about the deal, a spokesperson emailed Monday.