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New .Org Nominee an Old ICANN Face
August 20, 2002
After a month-long delay, an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) team selected Tuesday its choice for ownership of the .org domain extension.
The domain was on the block as part of a deal between ICANN and registry VeriSign, which agreed to let go of .org to keep control over .com and extend its registry ownership of .net.
According to critics the nominated bidder, the Internet Society (ISOC), was a shoe-in for the win from the beginning. Once a democratically-controlled body for addressing Internet issues (like domain extensions), the organization is now directed by those who pay for the membership level of their choice, which ranges from $1,250 to $100,000 a year.
Partnered with ISOC in the .org bid were Afilias Ltd. (owners of the .info top-level domain), IBM Corp., ULTRA DNS and DSI Technology Escrow Services, Inc. If ratified by the ICANN board of directors next month, ISOC will take over .org on Jan. 1, 2003.
According to Michael Froomkin, professor of law at the University of Miami and one of the editors of watchdog site ICANNwatch.org, there wasn't much doubt over who would get the nomination, regardless of the number of potential bidders.
Vint Cerf, ICANN chairman of the board, was once the head of ISOC, while Alejandro Pisanty, ICANN vice chairman, is the also the current chairman of ISOC-Mexico. ISOC, which has been in financial straits for years (thus the move to sponsored members), will reportedly use the profits from .org ownership to pay for ISOC's continued existence, Froomkin said.
"ICANN's decision to favor ISOC will rescue (them) from a looming financial crisis," he said in a post to ICANNwatch.org. "It will also reek of a 'done deal' since people have been saying for more than two years that top ICANN honchos wanted to give .org to ISOC to bail it out of its financial hole.
More at: http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/1449711
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