Nonprofit Group to Manage Domain

After being administered by for-profit companies since its inception in 1995, the .org Internet domain for organizations and groups is now being overseen by the nonprofit Public Interest Registry.

Under an agreement reached in April 2001, responsibility for the .org domain has officially passed to the Public Interest Registry from former operator VeriSign Global Registry Services.

Several Handoffs

The change was made by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to return the .org domain to its original mission as a central database for Web sites created and used by nonprofit groups.

The .org domain had been operated by the former Network Solutions since 1999. VeriSign later bought Network Solutions, taking over operations of .org under the deal. VeriSign still operates the .com and .net domain registries for ICANN, the nonprofit group that oversees the administration of Internet domains.

"We are pleased to begin the transition process," David Maher, chair of the Public Interest Registry board, said in a statement. "We have put together a solid transition team and are working together toward a smooth, stable transition resulting in no interruption of service for .org registrants."

Open Development Urged

As part of a transition agreement, VeriSign will assist in a 25-day phase-in period to provide back-end technical services. On January 25, the technical services for the registry will be switched from VeriSign to Afilias. Afilias manages the .info domain.

The .org domain, known mostly as the domain for noncommercial organizations, is the Internet's fifth largest top-level domain, with more than 2.4 million registered domain names worldwide.

The Public Interest Registry was created to manage the .org registry by the Internet Society, a Reston, Virginia-based nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to ensure the open development of the Internet.

ICANN selected the Public Interest Registry to operate the .org domain from among 11 organizations that had sought to oversee the domain. In November, ICANN signed the agreement with the Public Interest Registry, making the transition official.