The new owner of the .org net name has been formally chosen.

A body called the Public Interest Registry is being set up by The Internet Society to take over the running of the domain.

The .org domain needed a new owner as part of a deal brokered by the net oversight body Icann and registry Verisign which currently looks after the suffix.

The new body will take over by the end of 2002.

Money line

The .org suffix has the fifth largest number of registered domain owners and counts thousands of charities and other non-profit groups among its users.

More than 2.3 million organisations own .org addresses. By contrast the .com domain has attracted more than 21 million customers.

Verisign's contract to run the .org registry expires at the end of 2002.

Verisign agreed to hand over the running of .org as part of a deal to hang on to the lucrative .com domain for longer than specified in its original contract.

The bidding for a new .org owner was opened in April 2002 by Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which oversees the net's addressing system.

It attracted 11 bids from companies keen to take over.

A preliminary report published by Icann in August said that the bid made by the Internet Society "stood out from the rest".

That early decision has now been ratified by Icann's member bodies.

The Internet Society is a non-profit association that co-ordinates the technical and specification groups working on development of the net.

Rather than run .org directly, the Internet Society is establishing the new non-profit Public Interest Registry to handle the day-to-day running of the domain.

By taking over the .org domain the Internet Society hopes to generate much needed cash to keep itself going.

It is planning to set a standard .org domain registration fee of $6 (�3.85) and promote the net name to non-profit groups and charities.

Verisign has also agreed to provide $5m in start-up funds to help the Internet Society get its domain registry business going.