Private Equity Firm Purchases .org registry

Namecheap declares victory in .info and .org price caps case

Namecheap has announced that a three-year battle with ICANN over its decision to permit registries to charge as much as they want for .info and .org domains has been settled in their favour. The two parties have had their dispute in front of an Independent Review Process panel for more than two years, with this declaration being the first indication of the outcome. However, neither party involved has reported the findings in full, nor has ICANN released a statement of its own.

Namecheap’s objection to removal of pricing caps occurred shortly before the ultimately unsuccessful takeover attempt of Public Interest Registry by for-profit private equity firm Ethos Capital was announced. Ethos had planned to raise prices, but PIR, the non-profit registry for the .org domain, has not yet done so.

.info was an Afilias TLD when the IRP was filed but is now Ethos-owned Identity Digital’s biggest gTLD following consolidation.