How To Register A .org Domain Name

If y'all are following the tech news, yous might have seen the announcement that ICANN withheld consent for the modify of control of the Public Interest Registry and that this had some implications for .org. Still, unless you lot follow a lot of DNS within baseball game, information technology might non be that clear what all this means. This post is intended to give a high level overview of the groundwork hither and what happened with .org. In addition, Mozilla has been actively engaged in the public word on this topic; run into here for a good starting indicate.

The Construction and History of Internet Naming

As you lot've probably noticed, Web sites accept names like "mozilla.org", "google.com", etc. These are chosen "domain names." The mode this all works is that at that place are a number of "pinnacle-level domains" (.org, .com, .io, …) and and then people can go names within those domains (i.e., that end in one of those). Top level domains (TLDs) come in two main flavors:

Country-lawmaking acme-level domains (ccTLDs) which correspond some land or region like .usa (United States), .uk (United Kingdom, etc.)

Generic tiptop-level domains (gTLDs) which don't stand for to some country or region, such as .com, .org, etc.

Back at the beginning of the Internet, there were five gTLDs which were intended to roughly reflect the type of entity registering the name:

.com: for "commercial-related domains"
.edu: for educational institutions
.gov: for government entities (really, Us government entities)
.mil: for the Us Military (call back, the Internet came out of US government research)
.org: for organizations ("any other domains")

It'due south important to recollect that until the 90s, much of the Internet ran under an Acceptable Use Policy which discouraged/forbid commercial employ and so these distinctions were inherently somewhat fuzzy, just nevertheless people had the rough understanding that .org was for non-profits and the like and .com was for companies.

During this period the bodily name registrations were handled by a serial of government contractors (outset SRI and and then Network Solutions) but the creation and assignment of the pinnacle-level domains was nether the command of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which in do, generally meant the decisions of its Director, Jon Postel. However, as the Internet became bigger, this became increasingly untenable particularly as IANA was run under a contract to the US authorities. Through a long and somewhat complicated serial of events, in 1998 this responsibility was handed off to the Net Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which administers the overall organization, including setting the overall rules and determining which gTLDs volition exist (which ccTLDs be is determined past ISO 3166-ane land codes, as described in RFC 1591). ICANN has created a pile of new gTLDs, such as .dev, .biz, and .wtf (you may be wondering whether the world really needed .wtf, but in that location it is). Equally an aside, many of the newer names y'all see registered are not really under gTLDs, but rather ccTLDs that happen to represent to countries lucky plenty to take cool sounding country codes. For instance, .io is actually the British Indian Ocean's TLD and .boob tube belongs to Tuvalu.

1 of the other things that ICANN does is make up one's mind who gets to run each TLD. The manner this all works is that ICANN determines who gets to be the registry, i.due east., who keeps the records of who has which name every bit well as some of the technical information needed to actually route proper name lookups. The bodily work of registering domain names is done by a registrar, who engages with the customer. Importantly, while registrars compete for business at some level (i.e., multiple people can sell you a domain in .com), at that place is only one registry for a given TLD so they don't accept whatever cost competition within that TLD; if yous want a .com domain, VeriSign gets to set the price floor. Moreover, ICANN doesn't really try to keep prices down; in fact, they recently removed the cap on the price of .org domains (bringing it in line with well-nigh other TLDs). One interesting fact about these contracts is that they are effectively perpetual: the contracts themselves are for quite long terms and registry agreements typically provide for automated renewal except nether cases of significant misbehavior past the registry. In other words, this is a more or less permanent claim on the revenues for a given TLD.

The bottom line here is that this is all quite lucrative. For example, in FY19 VeriSign's revenue was over $one.ii billion. ICANN itself makes money in two master means. Kickoff, it takes a cutting of the revenue from each domain registration and second it auctions off the contracts for new gTLDs if more than ane entity wants to register them. In the financial yr ending in June 2018, ICANN made $136 million in total revenues (it was $302 million the previous year due to a large amount of acquirement from gTLD auctions).

ISOC and .org

This brings us to the story of ISOC and .org. Until 2003, VeriSign operated .com, .net, and .org, but ICANN and VeriSign agreed to surrender running .org (while retaining the far more assisting .com). Every bit stated in their proposal:

Every bit a general matter, it will largely eliminate the vestiges of special or unique treatment of VeriSign based on its legacy activities earlier the germination of ICANN, and generally place VeriSign in the same relationship with ICANN as all other generic TLD registry operators. In addition, information technology will render the .org registry to its original purpose, carve up the contract expiration dates for the .com and .internet registries, and generally commit VeriSign to paying its fair share of the costs of ICANN without whatsoever artificial or special limits on that responsibility.

The Internet Society (ISOC) is a nonprofit organisation with the mission to support and promote "the development of the Internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people's lives, and a strength for good in guild". In 2002, they submitted 1 of 11 proposals to take over as the registry for .org and ICANN ultimately selected them. ICANN had a listing of 11 criteria for the pick and the board minutes are pretty vague on the reason for selecting ISOC, but at the time this was widely understood equally ICANN using the .org contract to provide a subsidy for ISOC and ISOC's work. In whatsoever case, it concluded up being quite a large subsidy: in 2018, PIR's revenue from .org was over $92 one thousand thousand.

The actual mechanics hither are somewhat complicated: information technology'south not like ISOC runs the registry itself. Instead they created a new not-profit subsidiary, the Public Interest Registry (PIR), to hold the contract with ICANN to manage .org. PIR in plow contracts the actual operations to Afilias, which is also the registry for a pile of other domains in their ain right. [This isn't an uncommon construction. For instance, VeriSign is the registry for .com, but they also run .tv for Tuvalu.] This will become relevant to our story shortly. Additionally, in the summertime of 2019, PIR'south ten year agreement with ICANN renewed, but under new terms: looser contractual weather to mirror those for the new gTLDs (yeah, including .wtf), including the removal of a price cap and sure other provisions.

The PIR Sale

So, by 2018, ISOC was sitting on a pretty large ongoing revenue stream in the form of .org registration fees. Nevertheless, ISOC management felt that having essentially all of their funding dependent on one acquirement source was unwise and that really running .org was a mismatch with ISOC'southward main mission. Instead, they entered into a bargain to sell PIR (and hence the .org contract) to a private equity firm chosen Ethos Upper-case letter, which is where things get interesting.

Ordinarily, this would exist a straightforward-seeming transaction, just under the terms of the .org Registry Agreement, ISOC had to get approval from ICANN for the sale (or at to the lowest degree for PIR to retain the contract):

vii.five Change of Control; Assignment and Subcontracting. Except every bit set forth in this Department 7.5, neither political party may assign any of its rights and obligations under this Agreement without the prior written approval of the other political party, which approval will not exist unreasonably withheld. For purposes of this Department 7.5, a direct or indirect modify of command of Registry Operator or any subcontracting arrangement that relates to any Critical Function (as identified in Section 6 of Specification 10) for the TLD (a "Material Subcontracting Arrangement") shall be deemed an consignment.

Soon subsequently the proposed transaction was announced, a number of organizations (especially Access Now and EFF) started to surface concerns about the transaction. You can find a detailed writeup of those concerns hither simply I retrieve a fair summary of the argument is that .org was special (and in detail that a lot of NGOs relied on it) and that Ethos could not be trusted to manage it responsibly. A number of concerns were raised, including that Ethos might aggressively raise prices in society to maximize their turn a profit or that they could be more susceptible to governmental pressure to remove the domain names of NGOs that were critical of them. You lot tin find Mozilla's comments on the proposed sale here. The California Attorney General'south Office also weighed in opposing the sale in a letter that implied it might have independent activity to finish it, saying:

This office volition go on to evaluate this matter, and volition accept whatever activeness necessary to protect Californians and the nonprofit customs.

In plow, Ethos and ISOC mounted a fairly aggressive PR campaign of their own, including creating a number of new commitments intended to alleviate concerns that had been raised, such as a new "Stewardship Council" with some level of input into privacy and policy decisions, an amendment to the operating agreement with ICANN to provide for additional potential oversight going forward, and a promise non to enhance prices by more than x%/twelvemonth for 8 years. At the cease of the twenty-four hour period these efforts did non succeed: ICANN announced on April 30 that they would withhold consent for the deal (see here for their reasoning).

What Now?

Equally far equally I tin tell, this decision merely returns the situation to the status quo dues (encounter this post by Milton Mueller for some more detailed analysis). In particular, ISOC volition keep to operate PIR and be able to benefit from the automated renewal (and the agreement runs through 2029 in any example). To the extent to which you trusted PIR to manage .org responsibly a month ago, at that place'south no reason to think that has changed (of course, people's opinions may have inverse because of the proposed sale). Still, as Mueller points out, none of the commitments that Ethos fabricated in order to brand the bargain more palatable employ here, and in item, thanks to the new contract in 2019, PIR ISOC is gratuitous to raise prices without beingness leap past the x% almanac commitment that Ethos had offered.

It's worth noting that "Save dot Org" at to the lowest degree doesn't seem happy to exit .org in the hands of ISOC and in particular has called for ICANN to rebid the contract. Here'due south what they say:

This is not the concluding step needed for protecting the .Org domain. ICANN must now open up a public process for bids to detect a new habitation for the .Org domain. ICANN has established processes and criteria that outline how to hold a reassignment process. Nosotros look forward to seeing a competitive process and are eager to support the participation in that process by the global nonprofit customs.

For ICANN to actually effort to take .org away from ISOC seems like information technology would exist incredibly contentious and ICANN hasn't given whatever real signals about what they intend to do here. It's possible they will try to rebid the contract (though information technology's non articulate to me exactly whether the contract terms really permit this) or that they'll just exist content to go out things as they are, with ISOC running .org through 2029.

Regardless of what the Internet Society and ICANN cull to do here, I think that this has revealed the extent to which the electric current domain name ecosystem depends on informal understandings of what the various actors are going to practice, as opposed to formal commitments to do them. For instance, many opposed to the sale seem to accept expected that ISOC would go along to manage .org in the public interest and felt that the Ethos sale threatened that. Still, as a practical affair the registry agreement doesn't include whatsoever such obligation and in detail nothing really stops them from raising prices much college in order to maximize turn a profit equally opponents argued Ethos might practise (although ISOC'due south nonprofit status means they tin can't divest those profits straight). Similarly, those who were confronting the sale and those who were in favor of it seem to have had rather radically different expectations about what ICANN was supposed to do (actively ensure that .org be managed in a specific way versus just keep the arrangement running with a light impact) and at the terminate of the day were relying on ICANN's discretion to act one way or the other. It remains to be seen whether this is an isolated incident or whether this is a sign of a deeper disconnect that volition cause increasing friction going forward.