.org

Industry:	TLD
Founded:	1985
Headquarters:	775 Wiehle Avenue, Suite 200 Reston, VA 20190
Country:	USA
Website:	www.pir.org
Facebook:	pir.org
Twitter:	@ORGBuzz
Key People
Brian Cute, Chief Executive Officer

.org is one of the first generic top-level domains (gTLD) in the Internet Domain Name System (DNs). It is managed by the Public Interest Registry (PIR), a non-profit organization founded by the Internet Society (ISOC) in 2002.

History

.org was created by the Network Working Group led by Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds along with .com, .edu, .gov and .mil in 1984 as an open and unrestricted top-level domain name. Originally, the operations of the .org registry was managed by the SRI International's Network Information Center (SRI-NIC) since its creation until 1992.

In 1993, Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) assumed the registration services of the .org under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF) until 1998. However, in 1998, the Department of Commerce issued the White Paper in response to the instruction of Pres. Bill Clinton to form a new non-profit organization to take over the responsibilities in improving the technical management of the Internet Domain Name System, as a result, Network Solutions contract to manage the registration services of the .org was extended by the Department of Commerce until September 30, 2000. In 1999, Network Solutions entered an agreement with ICANN to remain as the registry operator of the .org TLD until December 31, 2002.

During the meeting in Accra, Ghana on March of 2002, the ICANN Board] resolved the request for proposals from parties interested in taking over the registry operations of the .org TLD from Verisign (acquired Network Solutions in 2000).

ICANN received 11 proposals by June of 2002 and created four teams to evaluate the proposals. The teams include:

• Gartner, Inc.- it was tasked to evaluate the technical aspects of the proposals
• An international team of Chief Information Officers- conducted an independent technical evaluation using a different methodology
• Noncommercial Domain Name Holders Constituency of ICANN's DNSO- responsible in usage evaluation of the proposals
• ICANN's General Counsel- evaluated the procedural aspects of the bids.

After evaluating the proposals, the teams recommended the three proposals as strong candidates to succeed the management of the .org registration services from Verisign which include:

• Public Interest Registry (PIR)
• Neustar
• Global Name Registry

The Department of Commerce approved Public Interest Registry to take over the management of the .org TLD registry. PIR officially assumed the functions of .org registry operator on January 1, 2003. In 2006, PIR renewed its .org Registry Agreement with ICANN until June 30, 2013.

PIR Report on .org

The .org TLD is considered the world's third largest top-level domain with an 8.8 million organizations registered as of 2010. The top ten markets for .org registrations include united states 60.4%, Germany 5.0%, United Kingdom 4.3%, Canada 3.5%, France 3.2%, Netherlands 2.2%, Spain 1.8%, China 1.8%, Italy 1.5% and Japan 1.5%. At present there are 32 registrars offering a second level registration of .org domain names after PIR's deployment of the DNSSEC.