.org

Last updated

.org
DotORG logo.svg
IntroducedJanuary 1, 1985;39 years ago (1985-01-01)
TLD type Generic top-level domain
StatusActive
Registry Public Interest Registry (technical service by Afilias)
SponsorNot technically sponsored, but PIR is connected with the Internet Society
Intended useMiscellaneous organizations not fitting in other categories (generally noncommercial)
Actual useNonprofits; personal sites; open-source projects; some government websites; mostly used by non-commercial entities
Registration restrictionsNone
StructureRegistrations at second level permitted
Documents RFC 920; RFC 1591; ICANN registry agreement
Dispute policies UDRP
DNSSEC Yes
Registry website Public Interest Registry

The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from 'organization'. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by the Public Interest Registry since 2003. The domain was originally "intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else." [1] It is commonly used by non-profit organizations, open-source projects, and communities, but is an open domain that can be used by anyone. The number of registered domains in .org has increased from fewer than one million in the 1990s, to ten million in 2012, and held steady between ten and eleven million since then.

Contents

History

A 2020 protest led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation opposed to the proposed sale of org to a private firm.

The domain ".org" was one of the original top-level domains [2] and was established in January 1985. The other early top-level domains were .com, .us, .edu, .gov, .mil and .net. It was originally intended for non-profit organizations or organizations of a non-commercial character that did not meet the requirements for other gTLDs. The MITRE Corporation was the first group to register an .org domain with mitre.org in July 1985. [3] The TLD has been operated since January 1, 2003 by Public Interest Registry, who assumed the task from VeriSign Global Registry Services, a division of Verisign. [4]

In November 2019, the Public Interest Registry (PIR) was to be sold by the Internet Society to shell company Ethos Capital for US$1.135 billion. [5] The PIR also announced it would abandon its non-profit status to become a B Corporation. [6] However, this move was criticized by non-profits and various digital rights groups on concerns that Ethos Capital, a private equity firm, would raise fees or censor the domain. The sale was blocked by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in April 2020 on the basis that transfer of control of the domain to the private equity firm would create "unacceptable uncertainty" for non-profits that relied on the .org domain. [7]

Registrations

Registrations of subdomains are processed via accredited registrars worldwide. Anyone can register a second-level domain within org, without restrictions. [8] [9] In some instances subdomains are being used also by commercial sites, such as craigslist.org. According to the ICANN Dashboard (Domain Name) report, the composition of the TLD is diverse, including cultural institutions, associations, sports teams, religious, and civic organizations, open-source software projects, schools, environmental initiatives, social, and fraternal organizations, health organizations, legal services, as well as clubs, and community-volunteer groups. In some cases subdomains have been created for crisis management.[ which? ]

The number of .org domains registered with the Public Interest Registry. ORG Growth Chart85-2010.png
The number of .org domains registered with the Public Interest Registry.

Although organizations anywhere in the world may register subdomains, many countries, such as Australia (au), Canada (ca), Japan (jp), Argentina (ar), Bolivia (bo), Uruguay (uy), Turkey (tr), Somalia (so), Sierra Leone (sl), Russia (ru), Bangladesh (bd), India (in) and the United Kingdom (uk), have established a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their ccTLD. Such second-level domains are usually named org or or.[ citation needed ]

In 2009, the .org domain consisted of more than 8 million registered domain names, [10] 8.8 million in 2010, [11] and 9.6 million in 2011. [12] The Public Interest Registry registered the ten millionth .ORG domain in June, 2012. [13] When the 9.5 millionth second-level domain was registered in December 2011, org became the third largest gTLD. [14]

As of November 2019, according to the Tranco ranking of the top 1M global domains, [15] domains under .org were about 6 % of the top 1000 and 7 % of the top 100 thousand and 1 million domains.

Internationalized domain names

The .org domain registry allows the registration of selected internationalized domain names (IDNs) as second-level domains. [16] For German, Danish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Swedish IDNs this has been possible since 2005. Spanish IDN registrations have been possible since 2007. [9]

Domain name security

On June 2, 2009, The Public Interest Registry announced [17] that the org domain is the first open generic top-level domain and the largest registry overall that has signed its DNS zone with Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). This allows the verification of the origin authenticity and integrity of DNS data by conforming DNS clients.

As of June 23, 2010, DNSSEC was enabled for individual second-level domains, [18] starting with 13 registrars.

Cost of registration

Since 2003, the Public Interest Registry (PIR) charged its accredited registrars a capped price of US$9.05 per year [19] for each domain name. The registrars may set their charges to end users without restrictions.

In April 2019, ICANN proposed an end to the price cap of .org domains [20] and effectively removed it in July in spite of having received 3,252 opposing comments and only six in favor. [21] A few months later, the owner of the domain, the Public Interest Registry, proposed to sell the domain to investment firm Ethos Capital. [22] After intense criticism from nonprofit groups and significant figures in Internet history, the proposal was scrapped. [23]

Regulatory positions

In March 2001, the Ethics Committee of the State Bar of Arizona issued Ethics Opinion 01-05, which discussed the limitations to which a law firm is subject when creating or using a website address for its law firm website. Among other conclusions, the Committee opined that a for-profit law firm may not use a domain name that contains the suffix “.org,” on the ground that such use “creates a false impression that the firm either is a non-profit or is in some way specifically affiliated with a non-profit.”

In light of the widespread use of the “.org” suffix by for-profit organizations in the years since Ariz. Ethics Op. 01-05 was issued, the Committee, reconsidering the matter in December 2011, concluded that the possibility that the public will be misled by a for-profit law firm’s use of “.org’ in its website address is remote, as a reasonable person, desiring to verify whether an entity is non-profit, would not rely solely on the entity’s website address.

Therefore, the mere use of “.org” by a for-profit law firm was declared not to be a violation of the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct, and Opinion 01-05 was modified accordingly. Arizona lawyers were cautioned, however, that a lawyer or law firm may not use a domain name that falsely implies that the lawyer or law firm is affiliated with a particular non-profit organization or with a governmental entity or which otherwise is false or misleading. [24]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICANN</span> American nonprofit organization that coordinates several Internet address databases

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization head-quartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the Internet's stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.

The domain com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Created in the first group of Internet domains at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for subdomains registered by commercial organizations. Later, the domain opened for general purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internationalized domain name</span> Type of Internet domain name

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures. These writing systems are encoded by computers in multibyte Unicode. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System (DNS) as ASCII strings using Punycode transcription.

A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registrar operates in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ee</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Estonia

.ee is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Estonia, operated by the Estonian Internet Foundation.

.pl is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Poland, administered by NASK, the Polish research and development organization. It is one of the founding members of CENTR.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ae</span> Country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates

.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the organization that manages the .ca country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. Its offices are located at 979 Bank Street in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. CIRA sets the policies and agendas that support Canada's internet community and Canada's involvement in international internet governance. It is a member-driven organization with membership open to all that hold a .ca domain. As of March 2023, there were more than 3.3 million active .ca domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.tw</span> Internet country-code top-level domain for Taiwan

.tw is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Taiwan. The domain name is based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code TW. The registry is maintained by the Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC), a Taiwanese non-profit organization appointed by the National Communications Commission (NCC) and the Ministry of Transportation and Communication. Since 1 March 2001, TWNIC has stopped allowing itself to sign up new domain names directly, instead allowing new registration through its contracted reseller registrars. As of May 2023, there are 17 registrars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ir</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Iran

.ir is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Iran. It is managed by the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.pt</span> Internet country code top-level domain for Portugal

.pt is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Portugal and is managed by Associação DNS.PT. It has the following second-level domains:

In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a second-level domain is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in example.com, example is the second-level domain of the .com TLD.

Single-letter second-level domains are domains in which the second-level domain of the domain name consists of only one letter, such as x.com. In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domains under the top-level domains com, net, and org, and grandfathered those that had already been assigned. In December 2005, ICANN considered auctioning these domain names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.рф</span> Cyrillic Internet country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation

The domain name .рф is the Cyrillic country code top-level domain for the Russian Federation, in the Domain Name System of the Internet. In the Domain Name System it has the ASCII DNS name xn--p1ai. The domain accepts only Cyrillic subdomain applications, and is the first Cyrillic implementation of the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) system. The domain became operational on 13 May 2010. As of 2014 it is the most used internationalized country code top-level domain, with around 900,000 domain names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public Interest Registry</span>

Public Interest Registry is a not-for-profit based in Reston, Virginia, created by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage the .ORG top-level domain. It took over operation of .ORG in January 2003 and launched the .NGO and .ONG top-level domains in March 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ngo and .ong</span> Generic top-level domains

The domain names .ngo and .ong are generic top-level domains (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used in the Internet, sponsored and managed by the Public Interest Registry. The backend is provided by Afilias. The .ngo domain name is an acronym which stands for "non-governmental organization", reflecting the intended usage of the domain.

References

  1. ↑ Postel, J. (March 1994), RFC 1591: Domain Name System Structure and Delegation, doi:10.17487/RFC1591 , retrieved January 28, 2021
  2. ↑ RFC 920, Domain Requirements, J. Postel, J. Reynolds, The Internet Society (October 1984)
  3. ↑ Mitre.org
  4. ↑ InterNIC - FAQs on org transition
  5. ↑ "Ethos paid $1.135 billion for .Org: Internet Society reveals the price it is selling out for". November 29, 2019. Retrieved January 17, 2020.
  6. ↑ "The Internet Society & Public Interest Registry: A New Era of Opportunity". .ORG (Press release). November 13, 2019. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
  7. ↑ Robertson, Adi (April 30, 2020). "ICANN votes down controversial .org sale proposal". The Verge . Retrieved April 30, 2020.
  8. ↑ ICANN Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), Retrieved 2011-03-31.
  9. 1 2 Buy .ORG (Registrant) General Questions, Retrieved 2001-10-25.
  10. ↑ Ragan, Steve (March 12, 2012). "DNSSEC to become standard on .ORG domains by end of June". The Tech Herald. Archived from the original on January 3, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  11. ↑ Berkens, Michael (February 14, 2011). ".ORG Grows Over 10% To Over 8.8 Million Registrations". The Domains. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  12. ↑ Prestipino, Peter (February 16, 2012). "The .ORG Registry Grows 10 Percent". Website Magazine. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  13. ↑ Goldstein, David (July 12, 2012). "ORG Seventh TLD To Pass Ten Millionth Registration Milestone". DomainPulse. Archived from the original on March 11, 2020. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  14. ↑ "The PIR Dashboard" (PDF). The Public Interest Registry. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 4, 2016. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
  15. ↑ Le Pochat, Victor; Van Goethem, Tom; Tajalizadehkhoob, Samaneh; Korczynski, Maciej; Joosen, Wouter. "Tranco: A Research-Oriented Top Sites Ranking Hardened Against Manipulation" (PDF). Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium 2019. doi: 10.14722/ndss.2019.23386 . ISBN   1-891562-55-X.
  16. ↑ "Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Questions". Public Interest Registry. Archived from the original on June 5, 2012. Retrieved March 28, 2010.
  17. ↑ Ajay D'Souza. "DNSSEC announcement in The .ORG Blog". Archived from the original on June 11, 2009. Retrieved July 2, 2009.
  18. ↑ "List of .ORG registrars". Archived from the original on June 12, 2010. Retrieved June 23, 2010.
  19. ↑ "Exhibit A--REGISTRATION FEES" (PDF). Public Interest Registry. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 27, 2018. Retrieved January 16, 2018.
  20. ↑ McCarthy, Kieren (April 26, 2019). "Internet industry freaks out over proposed unlimited price hikes on .org domain names". The Register. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
  21. ↑ Lee, Timothy B. (July 1, 2019). "ICANN eliminates .org domain price caps despite lopsided opposition". Ars Technica. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
  22. ↑ McCarthy, Kieren (November 20, 2019). "Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed". The Register. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
  23. ↑ Lohr, Steve (May 1, 2020). "A Private Equity Firm Is Blocked From Buying .Org". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved December 29, 2022.
  24. ↑ Ariz. Ethics Op. 11-04.
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