By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, July 29, 2002; 12:00 AM
In the Internet atlas, "dot-org" shows up as a stuffy university town
on the outskirts of the commerce-steeped "dot-com" Mecca. But as the only place
on the Internet devoted to noncommercial speech, dot-org is indispensable to consumer advocates, public interest groups and political dissidents, many of whom are watching closely to see who will be chosen to take the helm of the domain when the current registry operator gives up its role later this year.
"Dot-org is important now because it the one space on the Internet that ... has been devoted to noncommercial speech," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Program. "If it were to be turned into
just another dot-com, that would be a blow to speech."
Operated for years by Internet addressing giant VeriSign Inc., dot-org is slated to get a new landlord in October when VeriSign relinquishes its hold on the domain.
Eleven entities, both commercial and nonprofit, have applied to operate
dot-org, and global Internet addressing authorities are now slogging through hundreds of pages of application documents in search of a winning bidder.
Initially, officials at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) only planned to accept bids from nonprofit groups, but they later decided to throw the contract open to all comers in an effort to garner as many qualified bids as possible.
Although open to all Internet users, dot-org remains largely associated
with the nonprofit organizations for which it is named. Many within the
nonprofit community are closely following the bidding process, hoping to
ensure that the domain remains primarily a forum for non-corporate
voices.
"There's lots of commerce on the Internet," Center for Democracy and
Technology (CDT) Policy Analyst Rob Courtney said. "The Internet is not
only about commerce. There always needs to be space for noncommercial
comment and expression."
Dot-org represents a lucrative asset for whichever organization takes the reins of the domain. As the wholesale seller of dot-org names, the current registry operator, VeriSign, makes $6 a year for every dot-org name registered.
With more than 2.3 million registrations already in place, dot-org will
provide its operator with a predictable revenue stream in an often-shaky
Internet environment.
ICANN won't give preference to nonprofit bidders. The first priority, ICANN President Stuart Lynn said, is finding a stable operator to replace VeriSign.
"I don't believe the (ICANN) board would favor a decision to jeopardize
the stability of dot-org, so that becomes a very primary criteria," Lynn
said. "ICANN's first priority is to preserve the stability and
reliability of the Internet and the DNS."
