ISOC wins bid to administer .org domains
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has selected the proposal of the Internet Society (ISOC) for the operation of the .org top-level domain, beginning January 1, 2003. The Public Interest Registry (PIR), established by ISOC, will be the registry operator. EPIC President Marc Rotenberg was named as one of the founding board members of PIR.
ICANN is re-assigning the .org registry under a revised agreement among ICANN, VeriSign, and the U.S. Department of Commerce that was signed in May 2001. Under that agreement, VeriSign was permitted to keep its registrar business, NSI, provided that it agreed to relinquish .org at the end of December 2002, and subject to other provisions of the revised agreements. As part of those revised agreements, VeriSign agreed to endow the new operator with $5 million to help fund operating costs, provided that the new operator was a not-for-profit organization.