Public Interest Registry is a not-for-profit based in Reston, Virginia, created by the Internet Society in 2002 to manage the .ORG top-level domain.

[1] In November 2019, it was announced the Public Interest Registry would be sold by the Internet Society to private equity investment firm Ethos Capital for 1.135 billion USD,[2] but in April 2020, ICANN decided to reject the sale.

[18] It also applied for an equivalent domain, .ONG, which stands for Organisation Non Gouvernementale in French, and is also recognizable in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages.

[16] Non-governmental organizations told Public Interest Registry they needed a closed domain[21] that validated the legitimacy of websites accepting online donations to avoid fraud.

PIR said the Institute will bring together leaders in the anti-abuse space to fund research, publish recommended practices, share data, and provide tools to identify and report DNS Abuse.

[12] PIR holds an annual awards program to "recognize and reward outstanding mission-driven individuals and organizations from the global .ORG Community for their positive contributions to society."

[33] Previous .ORG of the Year recipients include ADES, which produces energy-efficient cookers in Madagascar and encourages the use of renewable energy,[34] Days for Girls International, which advances menstrual equity, health, dignity and opportunity for all,[35] and World Refugees School, a school that leverages technology to provide quality education to children in need globally in an affordable, scalable, durable, immediate and certified way.

[36] PIR intends to recognize 2022 awardees in the following categories: Health and Healing, Quality Education for All, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Environmental Stewardship, Hunger and Poverty, Community Building, Rising Star, and .ORG of the Year.

In 1993, the operations of .ORG were privatized and transferred from the Stanford Research Institute to Network Solutions – the single-bidder for further developing the domain name registration service for the internet – under a five-year agreement with the National Science Foundation.

[37] In 1998, the United States Department of Commerce issued the white paper that resulted in the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Presenting to the ICANN Board at its 2002 Budapest meeting were The Internet Society's CEO Lynn St.Amour and Afilias' CTO Ram Mohan.

Though the Internet Society did not receive the absolute highest score out of the 11 bids, as assessed by independent and staff evaluators, it was nonetheless awarded a perpetual contract[41] to manage .ORG.

[47] Marc Rotenberg, the founding Board Chair of the Public Interest Registry, stated in an op-ed that when the Public Interest Registry was established, “our aim was to promote the non-commercial use of the internet … We believed there should be a space of the Internet to promote non-commercial use and that the governance of the .ORG domain should respect the essential character of the users of the domain.”[48] On June 23, 2010, Public Interest Registry's technology provider Afilias implemented[49] the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol for .ORG, making .ORG the first open gTLD to sign its zone.

[53] The protocol was [51] implemented by Public Interest Registry's technical partner Afilias[54] during the tenure of former CEO, Alexa Raad, who played a role in creating the DNSSEC Industry Coalition.

[57] After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Public Interest Registry waived renewal fees for Japan-based .org domains to prevent them from expiring due to intermittent internet access.

The sale led to concern over PIR's transition to a for-profit venture, especially in view of the removal of price caps on .org registrations.

[63][64][65] People who came out in opposition to the sale included Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Rotenberg,[66] the first chair of the Public Interest Registry, as well as previous Trustees along with the first Executive Director of the Internet Society.

[67] Over 25,000 people signed a petition opposing the sale, and a demonstration was held outside ICANN's office in Los Angeles in January 2020.

[69] In February, the Internet Society's Chapter Advisory Council (which represents its membership) began the process to adopt a motion rejecting the sale if certain conditions were not complied with.

[70] On 30 April 2020, the ICANN Board, saying it was "the right thing to do," withheld its consent to the transfer of control of the Public Internet Registry to Ethos Capital, effectively killing the proposed deal.