.ORG Registrations

[Colin]

I have been hearing about how .ORG domains are going back to being strictly-non-profit-organisations-only, and that owners of these domains must prove they are non-profit organisations or lose the names.

I tried searching for some articles on this but found nothing.

What's the deal here?

[akashik]

http://www.icann.org/melbourne/proposed-verisign-agreements-topic.htm

It's all huff and puff at the moment and personally I think it's way to big a task for them to actually go through with it, but yes, in short, they are thinking of making people show cause why they should recieve a .org address.

Greg Moore

[James]

Too right that excercise would take for ever! According to domain stats there are currently 2,688,657 .org domains registered. Thats a lot of emails :lol:

[akashik]

I bet if they had a paid advertiser for each one of those e-mails they'd do it :)

Seriously though, it's not the contacting of people that would be the problem (though with the amount of people who wouldn't bother, or even see the mail, would make it difficult), the hard part would be proving that the domain wasn't really a not-for-profit organization.

They'd want to define that pretty well too. Little Billy's personal website could be classed as non-profit if he's just showing pictures of his new puppy. Our .org is just a redirect back to the .net domain. If they came pounding on my door I'm quite sure I could develop a non-profit site for it until the hype dies down then redirect it again.

I think they call it "Shutting the gate after the horse has bolted"

Greg Moore

[James]

You'd think an organisation of that size would have had the ability to see a little further into the future. This sort of problem was bound to happen. It wont just be .org extensions that will face this issue in the future.

It makes a mockery of the whole system.

[Jaiem]

In the strict sense too .net was supposed to be for network services sites/businesses. But many .net's aren't.

For these TLD's IMO it's too late to close the door, the cat has already run out.

[akashik]

I do know a lot of countries were thinking a little further ahead. A run though alldomains.com will show the restrictions on a lot of country specific domain extensions... Ranging from proving you live there, to some only offering domain services to registered businesses and companies.

Personally I think the net would be pretty dull if everyone went down that road. You need the fun stuff to get people online. If all the net was, was a collection of business sites, you'd just use the yellow pages instead.

They should just bite the bullet, and use the .biz or others and clamp down there...

Greg Moore