As reported by InternetNews.me, PIR, the registry operating the .ORG gTLD has announce a price increase of 10% effective July 1st, 2013. The new price to registrars will be $8.25, an effective increase of $0.55 per domain name year. This makes .ORG more expensive that .COM ($7.85) as of mid next year.

Public Interest Registry

Since many domain investors keep lists of domains ready to purchase when there are specials available, we figured we’d let you know about a current special that one of the early registrars, AIT Domains, is running for a limited time. You can register or transfer any COM, NET, ORG, INFO, BIZ or US domains for $2.99 including private registration and ICANN fee. No coupon code is needed.The price is only valid for the first year of domain registration and a limit of five domains per customer applies. Find out more about the special on their site.

The .ORG registry, PIR, announced that it has recently passed the 9 Million Registration Mark, citing a 10.3% growth over 2010.

“Hitting the 9 million registration mark is a testament to both .ORG’s reputation and its impact within the Internet community,” said Brian Cute, CEO of .ORG, The Public Interest Registry. “.ORG remains a community-driven platform and has become the domain of choice for organizations, individuals, and companies to channel their passion toward a shared purpose with their community.”

[via PIR Press Release]

.ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR) — manager of the world’s third largest generic top-level domain — today appointed Mr. Brian Cute as chief executive officer. With more than 12 years of experience in the Internet and communications industry, Mr. Cute will assume his leadership position on February 1, 2011.

Prior to joining PIR, Mr. Cute served as vice president of discovery services for Afilias, the registry operator for the .ORG domain. Cute had management positions in both a leading domain name registrar, Network Solutions, as director of policy, and a leading registry, Verisign, as vice president of government relations until 2003. He has led initiatives on wait-list service, private domain registrations, the elimination of Bulk WHOIS, and numerous other ICANN policy matters.

“As Chairman of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team at ICANN, Brian has constructively advanced the ongoing debate of getting the Internet industry to function more explicitly and effectively. We at PIR are pleased to have him on board, and we look confidently towards a future in which PIR will continue to step up in the public interest.“said Maarten Botterman, chairman of the board and interim chief executive officer.

Cute is replacing Alexa Raad, who had resigned from this position last year effective September 24th, 2010.

[via Press Release]

In an announcement sent to registrars, the Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced that they would follow suit with the recent Verisign increases and increase prices for .ORG domains to $7.21 per domain name year on April 1st, 2011.

The announcement reads:

This is a notice by Public Interest Registry (PIR), pursuant to Section 7.3(B) of the Registry Agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and PIR, of a price increase for .ORG domain name registrations.

Effective on April 1, 2011, at 0:00 UTC, the fee charged for domain name initial registrations, domain name renewals, and for transferring a domain name from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another will be US$7.21 per domain registration year.

Prior to this notification, PIR has increased the .ORG pricing only once, in November of 2008, since its inception in 2003. From that time to now, despite price increases by other TLDs, we have maintained our current wholesale fee and only passed through the increased ICANN fee starting in 2007.

Concurrent with this notification we are introducing two new programs. The .ORG Future Markets program, to help boost .ORG registrations in developing markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the revised Accelerated Growth Upgrade rebate program to help boost .ORG registrations in core markets.

As announced by the .ORG registry, Public Interest Registry, Alexa Raad has resigned as President and CEO, effective September 24th, 2010. She was with the registry operator for 3 1/2 years.

The Board has initiated a search committee for the next CEO. In the meanwhile, Mr. Botterman will step in as Interim CEO following Ms. Raad’s departure.

On the droplist for the coming days a curious find was brought to our attention – the domain viagra.org, previously owned by Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company that owns the brand is going to be deleted within the coming days. The interesting fact is that the domain actually only expires in August. Now we checked the list of deleting names and found additional names containing the Pfizer (52) and Viagra (13) brands being deleted on exactly the same date.

It seems that Pfizer may have decided not to keep protecting any of their brand names in the .ORG domain, similar to the way Ad Age suggested that companies are wary of having to protect their brand names across a lage number of new TLDs. It is obvious though that at least some of the names will be picked up after the drop, and possibly pursued again by the company’s lawyers.

Domain Name Wire had recently reported about a similar case, where the company Silicon Labs dropped their main domain name, SiliconLabs.com after it expired.

For obvious reasons we do not recommend to purchase these domains.

The .ORG registry operator, Public Interest Registry (PIR) has sent a letter to ICANN announcing their intention to increase their registration fees by 10% as of November 9th, 2008. The price increase brings the price for registrars up to $6.75 from $6.15 after last year’s price increase by 2.5%. The letter did not cite a reason. This follows VeriSign’s recent announcement that they will increase .COM & .NET prices.

[via AP/Google/Dan]