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The Internet Society Will Manage .org

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the formerly-known-as dept.

ahpeterson writes "The ICANN board just decided to hand control of the .org domain over to the Internet Society. You can read more about their bid here. Whee, no more VeriSign in .org!"

49 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. My .org by Klerck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does anyone want to explain what this would mean for my .org domain? I actually own several others, but is it going to move to a non-profit only kind of domain, or will they still be available for anyone?

    1. Re:My .org by AndyS · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the article it points out that you will still be able to use your domain even if you are commercial.

      " While the domain will be marketed to nonprofits, others will not be prohibited from registering .org names."

      HTH

    2. Re:My .org by Traicovn · · Score: 4, Informative

      Traditionally the .org domain was for individuals and non-profits. This of course changed in the late 90's. Actually if memory serves me right, .org websites domains were originally free to have.
      As you currently own the domains, you shouldn't have to worry about any changes in the domaim management system. My guess is that you would be grandfathered in. If for some reason you let your registration lapse, or if you decided that you wanted NEW .org websites, then it would be a problem I would think (if the rules change)

      --

      [Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
      {Traicovn}
    3. Re:My .org by garcia · · Score: 3, Interesting

      you better be able to. If VeriSign is going to continue to profit from it, why should we not be able to?

      I think they should have to give up 100% control of everything involved in the .org process, but that's me.

    4. Re:My .org by Soko · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Does anyone want to explain what this would mean for my .org domain? I actually own several others, but is it going to move to a non-profit only kind of domain, or will they still be available for anyone?

      A question I have - in the same vien as yours - is what will happen to the URL you use to get here - ./ itself - http://slatshdot.org. Snide remarks about profit aside, Slashdot is supposed to make money for VA Linux. If ISOC demands that .org is for non-profits only, will this domain be moved to .com, .info or somewhere else? Is this site enough about "a community" that ISOC will look the other way? Will Rob be forced to become what he hates and use the courts to retain the current domain name?

      Should be interesting to see what transpires.

      Soko

      --
      "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
    5. Re:My .org by Traicovn · · Score: 2, Informative

      more from me...

      if you read the second paragraph in the article and follow the first link Section 5 then you may find more answers.
      I think parts of the site may be suffering mildly from the /. effect though....

      --

      [Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
      {Traicovn}
    6. Re:My .org by pridkett · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, all domains were originally free to have. I think NSF used to reimburse NSI for the cost of each one. I remember back in the good ol days of domain squatting (when it cost nothing to squat because no one knew about it), the guy who had knotsberryfarm.com traded it to them for a couple of jars of jelly. Which really makes more sense then sending out rabid droves of lawyers. I mean if I had a domain that someone wanted they could be like "here, we'll give you a brand spanking new dual g4 if you give up the domain". It saves money on both sides. Of course, that's only if they had a legitimate claim on the domain. I'm not that much of a whore.

      --
      My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
    7. Re:My .org by scott1853 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I guess the real question would be what is the definition of non-profit:

      Those that are committed to strictly working at cost

      Or, those that can only make enough to break even depsite how often they run banners for Visual Studio.

    8. Re:My .org by Kallahar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      point of information:

      slashdot has slashdot.com, slashdot.org, and slashdot.de, and slashdot.jp (in japanese!)

      slashdot.net is being squatted by the norwegians
      slashdot.info is owned by ZDNet which is offering tech news, arguably profiting off of slashdot's good name.

      Travis

    9. Re:My .org by John+Hasler · · Score: 2

      > Traditionally the .org domain was for individuals and non-profits.

      Traditionally the .org domain was for anything that didn't fit anywhere else.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  2. no more reminders? by whoppo · · Score: 5, Funny

    So... with VeriSign out of the .org biz, who will send me "domain renewal" reminders 11 months before my .org domains are due to expire?

    --
    chown -R us /base
    1. Re:no more reminders? by whoppo · · Score: 5, Funny

      But VeriSign is kind enough to send me reminders for ALL of my domains.. even the ones registered elsewhere.. They're so nice :)

      --
      chown -R us /base
    2. Re:no more reminders? by ibennetch · · Score: 2, Funny

      From what I hear, I'm sure VeriSign will be happy to continue to send you reminders even though you're registered elsewhere.

    3. Re:no more reminders? by hndrcks · · Score: 2

      Register.com will be sure to send you a fake invoice, so don't worry.

      --
      Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
  3. Verisign still in it by rczyzewski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "VeriSign will continue to profit from .org as it owns a small interest in the company that will run the back end of the database for the Internet Society."

    Do you think Verisign is really out of it? I doubt it if they have a financial stake in the Internet Society's future decisions. I'll be curious how Verisign tries to slowly gain more and more authority in the background.

    1. Re:Verisign still in it by Conare · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Fighting to maintain over $10 million a year in revenue? Naaaah.
      Oops, my sarcasm is dripping again.

      --
      Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
  4. This can be good and bad by Spit_Fire1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With this decision they will apparently be deciding if and when an actual non-profit organization can have a .org domain(what the top-level domain was designed for) and stop companies from buying .org addrs to go with their net and com ones.

    However this also poses a domain squatting and slanderous sites to be able to have domains like microsoft.org for instance(i of course like microsoft as little as the next guy) but if someone owns the site a mistyped url could hurt smaller businesses, and geniune orginzations who should have the .org domains. Hopefully the ICANN will properly saction org domains and not try to hurt people using them now. Or for profit companys who need to use them.

    --

    "The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
    1. Re:This can be good and bad by espo812 · · Score: 4, Informative
      With this decision they will apparently be deciding if and when an actual non-profit organization can have a .org domain(what the top-level domain was designed for) and stop companies from buying .org addrs to go with their net and com ones.
      You are incorrect. RFC 1591 - Domain Name System Structure and Delegation:
      ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here.
      --

      espo
  5. Yay, the evil spreads! by HackHackBoom · · Score: 5, Funny

    ICANN is like the US Government: Give it jurisdiction over something and it appoints a commity to discuss the feasability of appointing a subcommity to plan the eventual migration to a senate panel on how to properly disperse the powers to multiple groups and organizations that should control the board that appoints the group.....

    I love America...

    --


    "It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"

    1. Re:Yay, the evil spreads! by Rasta+Prefect · · Score: 2
      ICANN is like the US Government: Give it jurisdiction over something and it appoints a commity to discuss the feasability of appointing a subcommity to plan the eventual migration to a senate panel on how to properly disperse the powers to multiple groups and organizations that should control the board that appoints the group.....

      ICANN is pretty much devolved from a branch of the US government, but this isn't surprising. However, I suspect that if you look closely, this is a characteristic of buerocracy around the world throughout history. Certain as death and taxes.

      --
      Why?
  6. This could be a BAD thing.... by CSG_SurferDude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This could be a bad thing considering that their current website (www.isoc.org) is currently slashdotted to death. One would hope that somebody in their purchasing department is actively ordering more bandwidth and servers to handle the long term load.

    --

    LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!

  7. Great... by Tadrith · · Score: 4, Funny


    Now how long before we can get them out of .com and .net as well? :P

  8. why the exclamation mark? by I+Want+GNU! · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't quite understand this. Why does the article sound so upbeat and happy? In this article, user timothy writes "mesozoic points out that ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "ICANN has issued a report recommending that ISOC run the .org TLD... ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "I'm not surprised; are you?" This preliminary report may be disappointing to those who hoped that Paul Vixie and Carl Malamud would be successful in their bid to head up .org."

    Slashdot, I never would have expected doublespeak from you! *sniff* I trusted you.

  9. Before you let the party begin by ebuck · · Score: 5, Insightful


    No more Verisign is something that many will be very, very happy about, but any "big" change in "the way things are done" often hurts before it gets better.

    Let's hope that the transition is as painless as possible.

  10. Negotiable Affection for Karma by sam_handelman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google's cache of the second link.

    --
    The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
  11. Nintendo Trouble by Trinton+Azaleth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does this mean I can repurchase n64.org, the domain which Nintendo so rudely took away from me by sending their lawyers after me, back when I was 15??

    1. Re:Nintendo Trouble by Trinton+Azaleth · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ok, that was vague. That details are as follows: back then I was a big fan of Nintendo, and paid using my own money to get the domain and have fun telling people how great the N64 was. I made a great site, and never got paid a dime for it. And I made it clear my site was not affiliated with Nintendo. So how did they repay me? They threatened to sue me unless I freely GAVE them my domain. I said no way, and sent letters back to their lawyers, considering my dad is a lawyer. Eventually they realize they couldn't TAKE my domain, since I registered my domain before they registered their trademark... so I decided to sell it to them for a rip off price of $50 because I was no longer interested in supporting Nintendo at that point. I was a non-profit individual having fun supporting a cool product. What did I get? Nothing but grief.

  12. so it's ISOC by frost22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    you applaud that ?

    The ISOC proposal is a shameless money-grab. They are contracting out the actual work to .info operator AFFILIAS (a privately held for profit company owned by - among others - Verisign) while grabbing a part of the revenues for whatever club activities they deem worthy.

    This is the very same ISOC that got its bid approved by an evaluation comitee which judged principial Bind developer and internet pioneer Paul Vixie and his coworkers to be technically incompetent to run a registry - ISOC should be ashamed (and refuse) to accept that approval at all !

    The whole thing is a farce....

    --
    ...and here I stand, with all my lore, poor fool, no wiser than before.
    1. Re:so it's ISOC by swb · · Score: 2

      I think it's BS too, but couldn't "technical competance" include the management experience involved in running a public service system like this?

      I'm sure that anyone who could figure out BIND 4.x code could figure out how to do that, but someone may be judging their ability to run an organization, not write software.

    2. Re:so it's ISOC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The ISOC proposal is a shameless money-grab. They are contracting out the actual work to .info operator AFFILIAS (a privately held for profit company owned by - among others - Verisign) while grabbing a part of the revenues for whatever club activities they deem worthy.

      Thus addressing one of the principal problems that has been facing the IETF, the lack of funding for ISOC which amongst other things funds the indemnity insurance for the IESG and Working group chairs.

      This is the very same ISOC that got its bid approved by an evaluation comitee which judged principial Bind developer and internet pioneer Paul Vixie and his coworkers to be technically incompetent to run a registry

      Well there is no way I would trust Eric Allman to run something like hotmail and he wrote sendmail. The problem with Paul's bid was that he underestimated the difference between 99.9% reliable and 99.999% reliable.

      The large registries don't use BIND and have not for many years. There is a major difference between running an enterprise scale DNS node and a registry, not least the behavior of the registrars.

      Thing is that the average Internet user is willing to pay $6 per name to get ultra-high reliability DNS service. If the DNS goes down the Internet goes down. Paul's proposal to do the job for less just did not seem like much of a bargain.

  13. The problem with ICANN... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...is that the members of the board are not elected. We're always babbling about democracy (or lack of it), and how our congressmen are paid by corporations to do their bidding.

    This is already happening with ICANN. Remember the Karl Auerbach incident?

    For all we know, this might just be a temporary measure, and that Verisign has already secured a deal which will go into effect in the future.

    Just something to think about...

    1. Re:The problem with ICANN... by HiThere · · Score: 2

      I seem to remember that it's in the ICANN charter that the directors have to be elected. Eventually. Someone just forgot to say when. Or was it by who?

      Either that, or perhaps it was that there was no justification for their actions at all. One of those choices.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    2. Re:The problem with ICANN... by karl.auerbach · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ICANN's so-called "reform" plan eliminates all vestiges of public participation in ICANN's decisionmaking processes. ICANN's board will probably never again have someone who represents the users of the net; it will be dominated by people who serve corporations who make money from users of the internet or who are trying to own the products of peoples' minds.

      My own term as director will end on December 15 of this year - I have no sucessor.

      As for ISOC/PIR - The actual awardee, PIR, didn't even exist as of a couple of weeks ago. In other words, ICANN awarded .org to an entity that technically didn't even apply for the job.

      I do not have faith in the organizational/business skills of PIR - although its board members have skills, I do not perceive that they have the kind of skills that will be needed to make sure that .org runs smoothly. In fact, my experience with the lack of skills of some of the people gives me great concern. And I do not see that there are adequate financial resources. In many respects, PIR will be little more than a thin shell around the actual operator, Afilias.

      One of ICANN's jobs is to create more competition in the domain name space. Afilias has already won a piece of the top-level-domain sweepstakes - it has .info. I do not see how giving .org to PIR/Afilias does anything but increase the concentration of DNS into the hands of a few operators; quite the opposite of increasing competition.

      And lest we forget - this transfer of .org is the "other shoe" of the deal privately brokered by ICANN's outside lawyer, Joe Sims, in which he gave .com to Verisign/NSI in perpetuity.

      Oh yeah, I voted against this. I liked the IMS proposal best. And I won't vote to give a TLD to anybody who already has one; nor would I vote for any entity in which ICANN directors or officers have a degree of control.

      By-the-way, I'm a member of ISOC and have been since before it was formed.

  14. VeriSign gone! by blurp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe...
    "Whee, no more VeriSign in .org!"

    or maybe not...
    "VeriSign will continue to profit from .org as it owns a small interest in the company that will run the back end of the database for the Internet Society."

    Not that I'm a pessimist or anything...

  15. Afilias? by sjlutz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From Press Release
    Afilias Limited, a global domain name registry services provider and current registry operator of the .INFO top-level domain (TLD), will provide PIR with a full range of back-end registry services to support .ORG.

    Uhhh.. didn't Afilias has a boat load of problems when they launched .INFO?

  16. iwon.com ? by Eric+Seppanen · · Score: 3, Funny
    That link just ruined my day. I had been assuming that the dotcom crash took those idiots down. How is it possible that iwon.com is still in business?

    Obligatory Moronic Business Plan:

    1. Pay users to visit our site
    2. Profit!
    --
    314-15-9265
  17. Anyone else? by Dwedit · · Score: 2, Funny

    Did anyone else misread this story as "The Internet Society Will Manage .OGG"?

  18. slashdot.info by twisty7867 · · Score: 5, Informative

    slashdot.info is NOT in fact owned by Z-D, but by Nathaniel Wilkerson of Orem, UT. The web server randomly picks other internet sites to masquerade as. When I went, it was E! Online, a couple more refreshes later, it was CNet, and on to a few other sites. Very interesting. I know the UDRP is against slashdot's religion, but, no time like the present to get the name back from someone who's clearly using it in bad faith.

  19. Re:Their site is down... by fishnuts · · Score: 4, Informative

    The registries don't need to deal with DNS requests. They send all their info to the GTLD nameserver maintainers on a daily basis, and let THEM deal with the DNS traffic. If ISOC is a non-profit organization, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they have only a finite amount of bandwidth and/or server resources, and we all know how much traffic slashdot is capable of inducing.

  20. ISOC proposed using PostgreSQL by tsmoke · · Score: 5, Informative
    This selection ought to be applauded as, at least according to their original plans, ISOC proposed using PostgreSQL.

    So it seems that those of us who sell PostgreSQL to client will have an easy answer for whether or not it can scale.

    talli

    1. Re:ISOC proposed using PostgreSQL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Vacuum does not require that the service be shut down. You are behind a year or so...

  21. Time to fix isoc.org then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe it's time for ISOC to fix their own domain isoc.org then? Two lame delegations out of three leaves only one nameserver. Not the good example they should provide I guess...

    $ host -C isoc.org

    isoc.org NS NS.ISI.EDU
    www.isoc.org admin.www.isoc.org (2002062813 10800 3600 604800 86400)
    *** isoc.org SOA record at NS.ISI.EDU is not authoritative
    isoc.org has lame delegation to NS.ISI.EDU
    !!! isoc.org SOA primary www.isoc.org is not advertised via NS
    isoc.org NS INFO.isoc.org
    www.isoc.org admin.www.isoc.org (2002062813 10800 3600 604800 86400)
    isoc.org NS NS.UU.NET
    isoc.org SOA record currently not present at NS.UU.NET
    isoc.org has lame delegation to NS.UU.NET

  22. Afilias will use PostgreSQL as their RDBMS engine by dhogaza · · Score: 4, Informative

    As they already do for .info. This is cool because the bid was head-to-head against contractors spec'ing Oracle and came despite Oracle submitting comments during the review process that claimed that no Open Source RDBMS would be up to the task.

  23. More Coverage of Decision by rhwalker22 · · Score: 2, Informative

    washingtonpost.com's story on the dot-org decision is online here.

  24. Re:slashdot.info by Kallahar · · Score: 2

    whoa, now slashdot is pointing to register.co.uk. Now eonline.com!

    Cool idea, someone set up slashdot.info as a rotating DNS page :)

    Travis

  25. DNS reliability needs by billstewart · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The average US or EU .COM is certainly willing to spend $6/year for 99.999% reliability. But there are a lot of people in the .org world who might be happier paying a lot less for 99.9% uptime, as long as their names don't get lost. After all, it's not very often that you do a name registration - you care more about DNS availability, and lots of that comes from the root nameservers, or from caches in the big ISPs' nameservers, and while a big concern like ACLU.ORG or EFF.ORG may want better access to the registries, joebobs-home-pc.org doesn't mind that much if people can't do a new DNS resolution for 1.4 minutes/day, as long as it's up most of the time.

    The costs of dispute resolution are likely to be much higher than the costs of registry servers - the monthly cost of a couple of hosted machines is less than the cost of a couple hours of lawyer time.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  26. A company is an organization... by anarkhos · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...and vice versa.

    Who the hell cares except a) the IRS and b) people who think profit is inherently evil and plan to shoot all profiteers.

    Oh no! Billy's tree house club is mowing lawns and fixing bicycles! Call the UN!

    --
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
    >life
  27. Re:slashdot.info by BCoates · · Score: 2

    How is it bad faith? Why on earth would the slashdot folks care about slashdot.info?

    While yer dumpster-diving, Steve Jankly of 'go daddy software' has slashdot.us, Rory Toma of 'Colin Burns Games' has has slashdot.cc, and if you want something out of the real ghetto of the DNS, slashdot.tv and slashdot.bz are still available.

    Better call out the lawyers!

    --
    Benjamin Coates

  28. Update by Quirk · · Score: 2

    October 14, 2002
    Will Big Business Dictate Public Interest?
    By Jim Wagner

    --
    "Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
    Cohen