The Internet Society yesterday said that, should it be selected to run the .org domain name registry, no revenue from name registrations will make it to its own coffers. The international non-profit, which promotes internet use in society, said a separate legal entity, the Public Interest Registry will get the money.

"There will be no intermingling of funds between PIR and ISOC," spokesperson Julie Williams said. "PIR will be a separate legal entity and isolated from ISOC financially; it will have a separate Board and distinctly separate operations... [PIR] will carry out the registry functions and will have no financial dependence on ISOC, and vice versa."

It initially appeared from ISOC's marketing material that funds from registrations in .org (estimated to be roughly $15m per year at current registration levels) would be used to fund ISOC programs. The organization has recently been facing a cash crunch and it was thought .org could help subsidize its work.

"ISOC has had some financial challenges the last few years, but we are actually in better financial shape now than we have been," Williams said. "If ISOC were to go under, it would not affect PIR and the registry operation at all since it's a completely separate and self-sustaining entity."

However, it remains uncertain whether ISOC will be selected by the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to run the domain. The organization's application ranked below others in two analyses of the bidders, and the methodology of a third analysis that ranked it highly has been called into question.

The other frontrunners are Neustar Inc (which runs .biz and .us) and Global Name Registry Ltd (which runs .name). The decision is expected to be made before the end of September, and the .org domain will transition to the winner from VeriSign Inc, which currently operates it, before the end of the year.

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