Public Interest Registry Welcomes New Worldwide Internet Leaders to the .ORG Advisory Council

May 3, 2006; 09:11 AM
RESTON, VA - The Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced today the appointment of seven new Worldwide Advisory Council members and a new representative from the ICANN Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) to fill expiring term open seats. The Advisory Council, created in 2003, is one of PIR's key resources established to solicit input from and be responsive to the needs, concerns, and views of the global noncommercial Internet community in the management of the .ORG generic Top Level Domain registry.

New members include:

-- Maarten Botterman: Europe (RAND Corporation)
-- Hans Peter Dittler: Europe (Internet Society)
-- Michael Mann: North America (Grassroots.ORG)
-- Sebastian Ricciardi: South America (Jauregui & Assoc.)
-- Sadiq Hussain: Asia (Majan University College)
-- Angela Stuber: North America (Ohio Community Computing Network)
-- Jaechul Sur: Asia Pacific (Korea NIC)
-- Frannie Wellings (NCUC Representative)

"Advisory Council members continue to provide PIR with sound advice on a wide range of registry issues and opportunities affecting the .ORG community," said Edward G. Viltz, President and CEO of PIR. "As we expand our focus on Internet privacy, registrant education and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), we are fortunate to have new members who bring a good balance of global diversity, technological expertise, and experience in the noncommercial sector to the current membership. We appreciate the wise counsel received from members whose terms are expiring and look forward to the contributions of our new appointees."

Previous .ORG Advisory Councils have been instrumental in advising PIR on issues central to the .ORG community including global outreach and data protection models. For more information on PIR, .ORG and the Advisory Council, visit www.pir.org.

About PIR

Public Interest Registry (http://www.pir.org) is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) to manage the .ORG domain. PIR's mission is to manage the .ORG domain in an exemplary manner, while educating and empowering the global non-commercial community to use the Internet more effectively and, concurrently, to take a leadership position among Internet stakeholders on policy and related issues on behalf of the .ORG community. PIR is based in Reston, VA, USA.

About .ORG

The .ORG domain, which has come to be associated with noncommercial activities, is the Internet's third largest "generic" or non-country specific top-level domain with more than 4 million domain names registered worldwide. In 2002, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board of Directors selected ISOC's proposal from among 11 organizations bidding to operate the .ORG top-level domain. PIR assumed control of the registry on 1 January 2003.

Michael Ward, Public Interest Registry, (703) 464-7005 x113