What do the American Museum Association, the Girl Scouts, Meals on Wheels, Wikimedia and the European Climate Foundation have in common? Their online home is on .org, one of the few areas of the internet that, until recently, had not succumbed to private sector profit models. But NGOs are now objecting to the sale of that top-level domain (similar to .com for companies and .edu for universities) to Ethos Capital , a private equity firm.

The management of domain names is a remarkably informal governance activity, given the importance of a well-functioning internet. The management of .org is, for the moment, in the hands of the Internet Society (ISOC). This non-governmental organisation has chapters and members all over the world, but many people will have never heard of its central corporation, which was created in 2002 to take control of the .org domain, which has existed for 35 years.

ISOC, like many other internet-related organisations, promotes a multi-stakeholder model of governance. This has been the mechanism by which the technical community, civil society and democratic governments have collectively advanced their vision of the internet. It contrasts with the top-down, closed-door model favoured by authoritarian governments.