Fury over .org domains....

Wow!

[NFFC]

"Furious .org domain name holders have swamped a public forum set up by ICANN yesterday, angry at proposals that will force them to hand back their domains unless they register as non-profit organisations."

The Register [theregister.co.uk]

[NFFC]

So nobody owns any .org's?

[uksitesubmit]

I actually agree with this, i believe .orgs should only be used for non profit organisations, and not for seo!

[tedster]

This idea would sit a lot better if so much marketing hadn't been done in past years encouraging businesses to register all three names.

There are two opposing forces at work -- on the one hand there's a need for branding and trademark protection, on the other, there's the obvious need for a lot more domain names. I don't see an easy resolution at all.

[NFFC]

>should only be used for non profit organisations

And who decides if the organisation is non-profit, surely not the US Internal Revenue Service!

[Napoleon]

This is absolutely outrageous - a clear abuse of power.

One of my first few purchases was a '.org' domain name - because the '.com' had gone and I wanted the name.

No-one then mentioned that it had to be non-profit. It was a free for all. Now some jerk appears and tries to RETROSPECTIVELY legislate. Totally unacceptable.

If having released the names on one basis that should be it. I have invested heavily in this in good faith.

If they now want a 100% non-profit domain suffix, why not create a new one, and declare it non-profit from the start? No problem with that... the rule is set at the outset so no complaints from anyone.

But to set something like this after people have invested is a disgrace.

[mivox]

It was my understanding that .org was originally intended for non-proift or non-commercial organizations. Just like .edu was for accredited educational institutions, and .gov was for government organizations. .net was originally supposed to be for groups that had some structural or functional role in the internet, like a bandwidth provider or some such. (.net always seemed a little fuzzy to me.)

.com was to be the only TLD available for general commercial websites. However, it very quickly degraded to where .gov and .edu were the only two TLDs being regulated in accordance with their original purpose.

Trying to retroactively enforce the original TLD restrictions at this point seems stupid and hopeless. Why don't they now try and reposess all the .net domains that aren't owned and used by companies providing/operating/manufacturing internet services and/or infrastructure?

Too little, too late.

[JustinForth]

I agree, that suggesion is ridiculous. Are they willing to pay the outrageous amounts back that some people sold their .org's for? eg: engineering.org ? That went for a hefty sum. I can't see them doing this.

Justin

[chiyo]

the idea of it being for "not for profit orgs" is good, but unfair to those who have already been accepted. NetSol gave up on fairly arbitating on what was an "org" and "net" a couple of years back, and let everybody know. So registering these domains was taken up be companies as a matter of faith. Unfortunately, faith has little to do with new economy investments these days!

I guess that "not for profit" will be defined as registered under US law as a not for profit organiztion. Basically this is US-centric. Where does that leave non - US companies? Same problem with yahoo when they defined "non-profit" the same way. There was no way for a non US org to prove they were non profit, leaving aside that the pay option was not orginally open to non US customers anyway.

[Michaelangelo]

So whats the verdict? I was planning on purchasing about 5 .org names to use strictly as content rich doorway sites. Judging from what I've read I won't be able to keep them. Is this true?