Public Interest Registry Donates $100,000 to Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts; $1 USD For Every New .ORG Domain Registered by the End of the Month Will Go to Red Cross

Business Wire, Sept 9, 2005

RESTON, Va. -- Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG registry, announced today that it will partner with its founding organization, the Internet Society, and its technology services provider, Afilias Limited, to donate $1 USD for every new .ORG domain name registered between 8 September and 30 September 2005 to aid relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. To provide immediate help, PIR and Afilias already have donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross as an advance payment on the final contribution. The total amount of the donation is expected to increase based on the number of .ORG registrations that occur between today and 30 September 2005.

"The devastation caused by this disaster continues to unfold. It is imperative that we all support the efforts of those members within the nonprofit .ORG community and others who are working tirelessly to provide Hurricane Katrina victims much-needed assistance," said Edward Viltz, President and CEO of PIR. "We trust our donation to the Red Cross disaster relief fund encourages additional contributions and aids in the efforts currently under way."

A link to the Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund has been added to the home page of the PIR Web site (http://www.pir.org) to help individuals and organizations make contributions online. PIR also is working with .ORG registrars to set up similar links on their Web sites and to encourage them to make their own contributions.

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 noncommercial 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.

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 3.8 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.

About Afilias

Afilias, a fully integrated global provider of domain name registry services, maintains international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland; sales offices in London, England, and Dusseldorf, Germany; sales and operational facilities in Toronto; administrative offices in the United States near Philadelphia, PA; and operational offices in New Delhi, India. Afilias provides a full range of registry services leveraging proven technology that is fast, reliable and secure. Afilias provides registry services support to the .ORG gTLD (under contract to Public Interest Registry), the .INFO gTLD and several country code TLDs.