Today in The Lowdown: Public Interest Registry (PIR), the people behind the .ORG domain, announced the winners of the 2026 .ORG Impact Awards at an annual celebration in Washington, D.C. Seven category winners were selected from over 4,200 applicants from 145 countries with the winner of the prestigious .Org of the Year Award winner selected from that elite group. The winners shared $180,000 in donations from PIR. 

Also inside: Autumn is here and outdoor temperatures are starting to drop, but it's still blazing hot in the domain aftermarket. A 7-figure sale - one of the five biggest publicly reported sales of the year to date - set the pace on our latest Top 20 Sales Chart. A half dozen 6-figure sales followed with five of those coming from the .ai camp.

From Introverted Teenager to Industry Titan: How Yoni Belousov Built a Domain Empire

In the spring of 2002, 15 year-old high school junior Yoni Belousov was sitting at a computer in his Ottawa, Canada home (the very computer he is seen sitting at in the photo at right), fascinated by the ways people were using the rapidly growing Internet to make money online. Over the 25 years since the introverted teenager was staring at that screen, he has left most of the rest of us in his entrepreneurial dust. 

In August Yoni and two minority investors launched a new company, Link Freedom Group, that filed applications with ICANN to run over 300 new Top Level Domains. The cost just to file each application was $227,000, so an initial investment of around $68 million - a mind-boggling jump from where Yoni started.  As jaw-dropping as the numbers are, the route that Yoni took to make it all happen is the best part. Full Story 

A Man of Many Talents: Todd Ryan Juggles Recurring Roles as a Film Writer, Director, Producer, Legal Eagle AND Domain Investor

From small town Indiana to Hollywood, California and back, Todd Ryan has not only left them laughing along the way, he has left them - and us - learning too. The multi-talented Midwesterner holds many titles - CEO (American Business Capital Corp and others), Writer, Producer & Director (ABC Productions), Co-Founder (PayNow.com), Managing Director & Senior Paralegal (JJN Solutions)...and believe or not, that's just the start. There are also the popular podcasts (the Domain Name Law Show and The DNX Show), as well as speaking engagements, including a key role at the 2026 NamesCon Global conference coming up next month in Miami.  

Full Story 

How 9/11 Cost The Castello Brothers a Beloved Family Member and the Heavenly Place That Once Gave Them Window Seats at the Top of the World 

Nearly 3,000 Americans died on September 11, 2001 when terrorists hijacked four separate jet airliners - two that down both the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, another that slammed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and a fourth, the famous Flight 93, that crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back rather than let the plane reach its target. Just about every American over the age of 40 can tell you exactly what they were doing when the news broke. Two leaders from our industry, brothers Michael and David Castello, can also tell you what it was like to lose a family member on 9/11. They also witnessed the destruction of an iconic workplace that, in addition to a paycheck, gave them some of the best memories of their life.   Full Story 

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