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Article: Bidding for .org. (Net Effect).(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Foreign Policy
- Article date:
- September 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For the first time in the Internet's history, control of a major generic top-level domain (gTLD) is about to change hands. VeriSign Inc. (www.verisign.com), which oversees the three best-known gTLDs (.org, .com, and .net), agreed in March 2002 to give up the .org domain--nearly 3 million strong--for competitive bidding.
The .org transition, due to be completed by January 1, 2003, has raised critical questions about whether the domain should return to its original intent: serving the nonprofit community. During the nearly 10 years VeriSign has operated the registry; no authentication process has been in place for the domain, which has meant that almost anyone could ...