By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, October 14, 2002; 12:01 PM
A Reston, Va.-based nonprofit group today won approval from global addressing authorities to manage the "dot-org" Internet domain.
The Internet Society, often known by its acronym, ISOC, will manage the domain starting in 2003, said Mary Hewitt, spokeswoman for the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN's international board of directors voted this morning to endorse a staff recommendation in favor of ISOC that was first made in August.
Earlier this year, 11 organizations from around the world submitted bids to take control of dot-org when Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign Inc. relinquishes its hold on the domain at the end of this year.
In making its recommendation in favor of ISOC, ICANN staff largely dismissed arguments that ISOC's shaky fiscal past would make the organization an unstable home for
dot-org. ICANN staff noted that ISOC's proposal calls for dot-org to be run by a newly created group, Public Interest Registry (PIR), which will be financially unrelated to ISOC. Under the ISOC proposal, Horsham, Pa.-based Afilias will administer the physical operation of dot-org, charging PIR a flat fee for each name registered in the domain.
Accounting for more than 2.3 million Internet addresses worldwide, dot-org represents a substantial revenue stream for the organization that wins the registry contract. As the current domain operator, or "registry," VeriSign now charges Internet address retailers (called "registrars") $6 per-year for every dot-org name they sell. Registrars in turn charge varying retail prices to individual users.
VeriSign is giving up its management of dot-org as part of a deal it cut with ICANN last year to maintain its control of the lucrative dot-com domain.
Founded in 1991, ISOC is the home of two key Internet standards-setting bodies, the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Architecture Board. It has members in more than 100 countries.
