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Last I checked - meaning a few minutes ago - .org was a generic TLD and PIR, the guys who handle it, make no mention of it being specific to the USA. In fact, the letters "USA" only show up inside the word "usable" in their FAQ on the .org TLD. .us is the TLD assigned to the USA. I'm not entirely sure about .mil and .edu, but I am very sure that .com and .net are just like .org in this respect.

pir.org has a long list of registrars that do .org.

Name.com and Network Solutions are two of the big, well-known registrars that support DNSSEC. .org was the first to support DNSSEC.

Here's a list of registrars that support DNSSEC for .org: http://www.pir.org/get/registrars?order=field_dnssec_value&sort=desc

First, see if your current domain Registrar is one of 13 .ORG Registrars that are supporting DNSSEC right now:
http://www.pir.org/get/registrars?order=field_dnssec_value&sort=desc.

If your .ORG domain Registrar is not listed as providing DNSSEC support, transfer your domain to GoDaddy or one of the other 12 .ORG Registrars with DNSSEC support.

Then generate your keys, sign your zone, and provide your Registrar your DS key. Anyone using a DNS server with DNSSEC enabled and ITAR keys will have the .ORG key and follow the chain to your domain. Anyone using a number of DLVs will also find the .ORG key.

Full support will work once the Root zone is signed, and then the ITAR will no longer be needed, and the DLVs will not be needed at all as more TLDs become signed.

If you're totally green to DNSSEC and didn't get the alphabet soup, you'll need to do some reading.

There is a Firefox add-on, DNSSEC Validator, which appears to work for the pir.org zone, as well as my own roysdon.net zone. Both are DNSSEC signed, although my roysdon.net is found in the DLV.

You can point the tool to use Comcast's DNSSEC trial resolver which is DLV-enabled at 68.87.68.170.
You can trial Comcast's DNSSEC trial resolved which does not have DLV support at 68.87.64.154 and rely only on the Root signature and previously published ccTLDs like .SE.

pir.org is an example of a zone which you can verify just by having the root zone's key. The root signs .ORG, and .ORG has signed pir.org.
As opposed to DLV-enabled zones, like mine, which rely on dlv.isc.org until .NET is signed. Well, also until Registrars add a way so that .ORG owners can sign their zones.

Well, you have a point for .com (or .co.uk etc) names - but what about .org? PIR promotes itself as a public interest registrar, but allows domain name squatting freely, which seems counter to its aspiration here that "Through the registry for .ORG, your organization is linked to a well-established brand of trust and integrity".

I'm actually not sure if you can still get 3rd and 4th-level delegations. I'm assuming you can for "official" gov, school (k12), library (lib), etc. business. I know you cannot get personal/business ones like the one that I have, those are no longer available, you just have to pay and get one right off of .US.

I too dislike NSI, but .ORG isn't under their control anymore, but under the ISC's PIR, which I very much like. I have some .NETs from way back, but at least I have them over at GKG.NET. One thing I like about GKG.net is their free email address cloaking.

.org was not created for non-profit organizations, it was originally created as a catch-all for organizations that didn't meet the requirements for the other gTLDs. PIR's History Page, RFC 920, RFC 1591

The Internet Society is a non-profit, non-governmental, international, professional membership organization. Its more than 100 organization members and over 20,000 individual members in over 180 nations worldwide represent a veritable who's who of the Internet community. ...

1775 Wiehle Ave.,Suite 102
Reston, VA 20190-5108, USA
tel: +1 703 326 9880
fax: +1 703 326 9881
Email: info@isoc.org.

4, rue des Falaises
CH-1205 Geneva
Switzerland tel: +41 22 807 1444
fax: +41 22 807 1445
http://www.isoc.org/

PIR, a not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) in 2002, manages the .ORG top-level domain (TLD) and plays a number of roles in helping .ORG thrive. PIR's primary responsibility is managing the database of .ORG domain names (Internet addresses), which it does with support from its technical provider, Afilias Limited. That database connects individuals surfing the Web to the .ORG sites they seek. http://www.pir.org/AboutPIR/AboutPIR.aspx

Afilias Limited is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with U.S. offices near Philadelphia, PA, sales offices in London, UK, an operations center in Toronto Canada, and operational offices in New Delhi, India http://www.afilias.info/about_afilias/

I think the likely choices are either Tucows (as the registrar) or the Public Interest Registry, who is the actual maintainance organization for the .org TLD.

I'm not sure how PIR is structured and how responsive they would be to a U.S. court order -- a lot of their board of directors seem to be European, although their mailing address is in Reston, VA, and I'm not sure where they're officially incorporated -- but Tucows is probably in a position where they have a lot to lose if they ignored it.

Still, can a registrar really "pull" a domain? It's the PIR that maintains the root DNS servers for the TLD, so if they decide to just not delete spamhaus's DNS entry, then the domain stays active. Tucows basically sends requests to the PIR to add new DNS records when someone registers a new domain, but they don't (at least, I don't think they do) actually operate the servers themselves. What is Tucows supposed to actually do?

It would be interesting if PIR just said "no" to the order, once it goes to them from Tucows, and refused to do it. There could be some very interesting precedent as a result of this: should a U.S. court have the authority to pull a domain belonging to a non-U.S. corporation or citizen? Should a German court be able to order a domain for a U.S. corporation or citizen pulled? How about a Saudi Arabian court?

Why would SpamHaus sue ICANN? ICANN doesn't control .ORG domains; PIR does.

I still don't quite understand it, though. (And maybe the judge doesn't, either, hence the problem...) How could ICANN "kill" a domain?

ICANN controls the root nameservers, so they could conceivably "kill" any TLD of their choice (not that this wouldn't be insanity, but it's technically possible), but they don't manage any of the domains within the TLDs themselves, at least to my understanding. .com and .net are managed by Verisign, .org is run by the Public Interest Registry, .edu is EduCause, etc. So if you wanted to order someone to shut down spamhaus.org, it would be PIR or their "technical partner," Afilias Ltd.

The best response ICANN could make to the request to put a hold on the name is "we can't do it." At the very least, it would deflect the request to the actual maintainance organization for the TLD (in this case PIR), who would be in a better position to accede to or refuse the request. The updating, maintanance, suspension, or takedown of individual domains just isn't within ICANN's jurisdiction; one would hope a Federal judge would understand that, conceptually.

They can do what they want if the registrar's offices are in USA. The data is stored on a hard disk in the USA then the court can sieze it.

The original poster was talking about ICANN not being able to do anything, and rightly so. I haven't read the contract between PIR and ICANN, but I doubt it includes the ability for ICANN to remove specific delegations from the .ORG domain.

You are correct that the court could theoretically size the servers that are located in the USA, although I'm not sure what the legal justification would be. PIR is not a party in this legal proceeding, as far as I know.

I believe they don't currently control .org, but I might be wrong.

Ah, but Verisign has nothing to do with the .org TLD anymore. That's PIR: http://pir.org/

Public Interest Registry has been doing this since last September. Less than 5 minutes, according to their announcement.

Want a whole bunch (most) registered domain names in the world? You'll need to fill out some forms and wait maybe a week (except edu), but it's worth it. Click for biz, edu, int, info, org, com, net. These files are whoppers for the most part. Perl would not read the com file under redhat 6 its' so big. I use them for my surf engine, iconsurf.com.

to put it bluntly
a perpetual contract

Verisign doesn't have a perpetual contract on the com/net gTLDs. Their contract on .net expires in 2005 and .com expires in 2007. The already lost .org to PIR last year, so it is plausible that they may lose .com and/or .net as well.

However, be careful what you ask for. PIR has proven themselves to be even more incompetant than Verisign. It was nice to see them move to EPP, but if they had messed up a .com transition as much as they messed up the .org transition you'd have been crying on your knees to bring Verisign back.

Regardless, SiteFinder still stinks.

PIR (Public Interest Registry) operates the .org domain, not Verisign.

And that brings me to the point of this column: While we may be emotionally distancing ourselves from the world, the world is getting more integrated. That means that what people think of us, as Americans, will matter more, not less. Because people outside America will be able to build alliances more efficiently in the world we are entering and they will be able to reach out and touch us -- whether with computer viruses or anthrax recipes downloaded from the Internet -- more than ever.

The point is more fear and paranoiac fantasies as only Thomas Friedman can spin, with an evil-doer under every rock, a terrorist behind every tree and, now, a rabid, sweaty-toothed madman coming to get us behind every keyboard.

From his lofty perch high atop the NY Times, Friedman has seen a career revival thanks to 9/11, winning a Pulitzer for his turgid writing about the event and its effects. When Friedman gets basic facts just plain wrong, it makes you wonder how much else he gets wrong, or otherwise intentionally distorts or misrepresents just so he can make everyone see the world through his lens where terrorists will get all of us.

Examples?

VeriSign, which operates much of the Internet's infrastructure...

and

A domain request is anytime anyone types in .com or .net

Really? The last time I checked VeriSign was only responsible for maintaining the .com and .net registries, as well as most SSL certificate services. There are 243 country code top-level domains, plus the .org TLD, not just .com and .net. The way Friedman makes it sound it's as if there's nothing else out there, and I'm not sure which is worse: that he was too lazy or too apathetic to talk to anyone other than VeriSign to get a basic understanding of the Internet to accurately write about it for his many non-technical readers.

These are basic facts and are simple to check. Any journalism student can do this so why doesn't Friedman?

Given his penchant for hyperbole in overstating the negative consequences of everything and minimizing the positives, it's no surprise that Friedman has completely missed the fact that the same technologies he fears are just as capable of opening up communications. He says that while the world is growing more integrated and what the world thinks about the USA will matter more, the USA is becoming ideologically isolationist and it doesn't need to heed what the rest of the world tells it. Proliferation of the Internet facilitates the free exchange of ideas that can result in better understanding and relations with the rest of the world, which Friedman apparently believes is full of nothing but some sort of irrational monolithic hatred.

When Friedman takes such a reductionist view of the world that amounts to Us vs. Them, is it any wonder that all Friedman can see are terrorists, terrorists everywhere and not a refuge in sight.

When the only tool you have is a hammer the whole world looks like a nail.

The transition details can be found on the Public Interest Registry's Homepage. In short, they'll close the registry at 14:00 UTC tomorrow, transfer to Afilias's systems, and reopen the registrations on Sunday at 23:00 UTC.

How come rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster John Poindexter gets a Pentagon job and a multimillion dollar program, while fellow rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster Richard Secord is being investigated for alleged stock fraud? Whatever happened to equal protection under the law??

How come rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster John Poindexter gets a Pentagon job and a multimillion dollar program, while fellow rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster Richard Secord is being investigated for alleged stock fraud? Whatever happened to equal protection under the law??

Now, I saw you say that you were a separatist, which therefore makes you an official kook, but I think it's worth responding to a couple of these claims.

Okay, that's disturbing...but at least we don't give our taxes to an agency [nsa.gov] that routinely eavesdrop on its citizens AND those of other countries (Echelon, anyone?). Don't you think they have secret databases of their own, mmh?

The sad fact of the matter is that we do.

See:

• CSIS
• CSE
• A CP article on budget funding for CSIS and the CSE.

I can't be bothered to pay Stats Canada a few bucks to get the exact figure, but a CP article here puts CSIS's budget at roughly 200m per year. The link up above put the CSE's at 106m.

There's an article here that provides a couple alleged examples of illegal domestic operations by CSIS... Back in late September, there were a great number of newspaper articles from various sources discussing what CSIS does and doesn't do, among them were mentions of things such as statements by former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy declaring that CSIS "does not undertake any kind of overseas operation," yet after musings about the creation of a new, foreign operations agency by the present government in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the USA, someone at CSIS, possibly the director, revealed that CSIS has, in the part, operated in foreign countries and maintained the ability to do so. It's so good to see the Liberal's foreign minister either deliberately lying about or actually ignorant of such goings-on.

Here is a page that gives brief summaries of several books about Canada's spy agencies, including one that gives details on a particular CSE operation in England.

Don't forget that any mail (ie, post), telephone conversation, or internet traffic that crosses an international border into or out of Canada is considered fair game, and can legally be intercepted. Again, there are many second hand reports that illegal domestic surveilance has also taken place for many years.

Next,
The National Post is one of Canada's most conservative newspapers. It is owned by Conrad Black

Incorrect. The National Post (I don't read it, myself) is now owned by CanWest (the Aspers), who are well-known Liberal supporters. If you've been following the news in the past week, you'll see many reports that they are *far* more restrictive of what gets printed in their papers than Conrad Black ever was. Black allowed dissent, apparently with *very* few topics (unknown to me) off limits. The Aspers are more than a little looser with the word 'taboo'. The Globe&Mail's search function never works for me, but I believe they ran something by a former National Post columnist titled 'Why I Quit the Post' on Monday or so.

The deficiency is about Europeans carping about American ignorance while they still manage to elect governments with strong Neo-Nazi elements.

No, the deficiency is about Americans carping about European ignorance while still electing governments with strong racist elements. [1], [2].

Perhaps, but we are still talking about a Europe intent on ignoring a European government bent on genocide a mere two years ago.

No, we're talking about an America that supported brutal dictatorships all over Latin America and still deprives its aboriginal population of their treaty rights.

Shouldn't Europeans be free to listen or watch whatever they please?

As one example, I read that when Jurassic Park was released, it was playing in one-quarter of all the movie theatres in Paris. How many French films are playing in your town?