(www.theregister.co.uk)
The billion-dollar deal set off alarm bells from the very beginning: no one in the domain name industry had ever heard of Ethos Capital, and it only had two named employees. It quickly emerged it had been secretly created by a former CEO of ICANN, and he had registered the company one day after ICANN made clear it was going to lift price caps on the 10 million .org domains, instantly making the registry worth tens of millions more.
The truth however is that ICANN’s staff and CEO were happy to bless the deal, as were several key board members, and it took the repeat intervention of other board members to stop the sale from being pushed through.
I have to give all the props to Kieren McCarthy, who has been all over this since the start of this roller coaster. As I said, even though the internet community has scored a huge win, it's far from over.
ICANN finally halts $1.1bn sale of .org registry, says it's 'the right thing to do' after months of controversy