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Re: Generic announcement
At 6:37 PM -0700 4/22/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
>This is from a story on Top Level Domain Names. Seems like it could apply
>to anything:
>
>"In Washington DC, officials from the White House, federal agencies and
>Congress say regulations may be necessary to promote a free-market
>system. A White House inter-agency taskforce was due to meet last
>week, after CWI's press deadline, to discuss the matter."
Here's an article I wrote about this last week. The White House interagency
task force, under OSTP, has met twice already.
-Declan
*******
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 11:36:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: FC: Domain name disputes, Network Solutions, and the FCC
*****************
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,847,00.html
The Netly News
http://netlynews.com/
April 16, 1997
by Declan McCullagh ([email protected])
Don Telage, the president of Network Solutions -- the company
that oversees Internet domain-name registration -- wants the
government to seize control of your Net address. "The FCC should
assume interim authority" over domain names, he argues. "These
functions need to be institutionalized."
Telage says that unless the FCC steps in, a plan to add new
top-level domains such as .firm and .nom will bewilder netizens, spark
disruptive lawsuits and threaten the "fragile stability of the Net."
He proposes that the federal government nix additional top-level
domains for now, then pick a contractor to deal with them (perhaps
Telage's own firm, Network Solutions).
And so the battle lines were drawn earlier this week between a
proposal granting the FCC jurisdiction over the Net and the
International Ad Hoc Committee's (IAHC) plan to create a Swiss
organization to rule cyberspace -- with the backing of the Internet
Society, the U.N., the World Intellectual Property Organization and
the International Telecommunication Union. Important members of the
high-tech community, including UUNET and MCI, have endorsed the IAHC
plan, but Network Solutions hopes to muster support for its
counterproposal from within the Beltway. Both sides agree that the Net
is choking under the clogged .com domain, but they disagree on how to
answer these questions: Who gets to sell additional top-level domains,
what will they be and who controls the process?
At stake, the contenders claim, is nothing less than the future
of the Internet. Network Solutions' proposal, unveiled on Monday at a
Federal Networking Council Advisory Committee meeting, is only the
latest offensive in the increasingly bitter war over who controls the
three-letter suffixes that identify organizations. These databases
have quickly become hot property: Thanks to its government-granted
monopoly, Network Solutions raked in up to $100 million last year.
That turned heads. Gold rush fever spread to the would-be profiteers
at Image Online Design, who last year thought they'd get rich quick by
claiming exclusive ownership of the ".web" top-level domain. (They
failed. They're suing.)
Which amply demonstrates one thing: The informal, cooperative
gentleman's agreement that served the Net so well during its
not-for-profit infancy no longer works. This growing realization marks
the end of the old Internet and the arrival of the new. No longer can
Jon Postel, a little-known but highly trusted network guru, run the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and decide what top-level
domains should exist. Not only is he being battered by lawsuits, what
happens if he drops dead tomorrow? I don't mean to be morbid here, but
this is important stuff in high-powered telecom circles: The Federal
Networking Council's Advisory Committee took time this week to
seriously contemplate the "Jon Postel getting hit by a beer truck"
scenario.
The roots of the current controvery stem from when Network
Solutions won an exclusive contract from the National Science
Foundation to maintain the InterNIC database. After the company
started charging for domain names registration in 1995, netizens
started to complain. "The community has given us incredibly powerful
pushback that they don't like the lack of competition," says Perry
Metzger, a member of IAHC and the president of a New York consulting
firm.
The IAHC proposal aimed to fix that problem by allowing other
private-sector registrars to compete under rules created in Geneva.
Yet its critics say more guidance is needed from the U.S. government.
"There needs to be some sort of nominal governmental action or
responsibility to provide a mechanism for the industry to meet and not
run afoul of antitrust laws," says Tony Rutkowski, former head of the
Internet Society and now a leading critic of the organization. In
other words, it's time for the federal government to expropriate what
it created.
Now, if there's a sure-fire way to get federal officials
twitching to regulate, it's an industry appearing divided and in need
of help. "What happens when the notion of industry self-regulation
fails? What does the government do? Do we have to come in and clean up
afterwards?" one Clinton administration official asked me recently.
Sure enough, last month a White House interagency committee formed.
The goal: to decide what the U.S. government should do with domain
names. "We're collecting information. We're collecting advice," says
Glenn Schlarmann from the White House Office of Management and Budget.
"The FCC probably has a role. The Patent and Trademark Office probably
has a role. The government traditionally has been the guardian of
public interest." (Of course, other countries may have a different
idea of "public interest" and may take a very dim view of the U.S.
seizing control.)
Even some high-tech firms hardly known for their willingness to
cozy up to regulators quietly welcome this move as a way to stabilize
the Net. Right now, it's vulnerable not only to beer trucks hitting
Jon Postel, but also, more disturbingly, to claims under antitrust
laws. That's exactly what a lawsuit filed last month in New York is
arguing. PGP Media's complaint claims that Network Solutions "has
conspired" to head off "competition in the domain name registration
market."
Now, PGP Media may have a reasonable claim under antitrust laws
-- but if the suit succeeded, it would spell disaster for the Net. PGP
Media wants to create an unlimited number of top-level domains, but
the Net can only handle a few hundred. Tony Rutkowski suggests the FCC
as a way out. The IAHC plan suggests WTO and the ITU.
My own suggestion is to steer clear of both bureaucrats and
Eurocrats. Instead, netizens should ask the U.S. Congress to pass a
law exempting the Internet from dusty, century-old antitrust laws.
Where's the Congressional Internet Caucus when we need it?
###
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