I rest my case...
Europeans Disappointed By Net Names Plan ( 1/30/98; 9:00 p.m. EST)
By Douglas Hayward, TechWeb European Internet organizations could
barely disguise their disappointment with a plan published Friday by the
U.S. government to privatize the running of the Internet's domain name system.
In what has been called the "green paper," the U.S. government said it wants
a private nonprofit corporation to control the entire Internet domain name
system. The new corporation would appoint up to five independent
organizations -- known as registries -- to administer domain names. Each of
these registries would be entitled to administer a single new top-level
domain. Possible new top-level domains mentioned by the paper include .vend
and .store.
The U.S. government plan is a grievous blow to two closely related
European-based organizations -- the Internet Policy Oversight Committee and
the Council of Registrars (CORE) -- which proposed last year to create seven
new top-level domains. The White House document gives no detailed timeline
for introducing its five proposed new domains, whereas the European bodies
planned to get their seven new domains operating by late March 1998.
"The plans published today by the U.S. government will delay the
introduction of competition among organizations registering domain names,"
said Jonathan Robinson, managing director of General Internet, a British
domain-name registrar that sells .com and .co addresses to users.
"That is something that will only serve the interests of entrenched
monopolies," he said. "There is no way that cheaper Internet domains are now
going to be made available to users right away," said Robinson, whose
company hoped to sell addresses using the seven new domains proposed by the
European groups.
"There is no time frame in the U.S. government plan for establishing the new
domain names," said Antony Van Couvering, president of the U.S. arm of
London-based domain name registrar, NetNames. "It could be a year or more,
despite the fact that CORE and some alternative registries are ready to go,"
he said.
"The plan essentially pushes off all the difficult questions to a group that
won't be formed until the year 2000," Van Couvering said. "What is everyone
going to do in the meantime?"
The green paper effectively guarantees the U.S. government a long-term role
in directing the Internet, even though the Clinton administration is
supposedly privatizing the administration of the Net, Robinson added. "This
just entrenches the U.S government's position, when it should be handing
power over to the Internet community," Robinson said.
The Internet Policy Oversight Committee and CORE are not going to accept the
U.S. government plans, said Robert Shaw, a leading member of the committee.
The plan to give commercial groups control over individual top-level domains
is a cause for concern, said Shaw, who is an adviser at the International
Telecommunication Union, the Geneva-based United nations agency.
"The problem with the concept of top-level domains being owned by commercial
registries is that the database is worth tremendous commercial value," Shaw
said. "We could have a situation where one company in the U.S. is going to
have right to one very high value domain name, such as .inc," he said. The
committee and CORE will meet with White House technology adviser Ira
Magaziner soon to express their concerns, he added.
European Internet service providers gave the plan a cautious welcome Friday,
but said that the not-for-profit private organization proposed to run the
new infrastructure would need greater input from service providers.
"Overall, it looks like a pretty good plan, but we are concerned about a
lack of recognition of the fact that Internet service providers are
stakeholders in the Internet," said Jim Dixon, president of Euro-ISPA, a
group which coordinates the activities of national Internet service
providers' associations in Europe. "This is a bit silly, given that Internet
service providers are investing billions of dollars in developing the
Internet," he said.
Dixon said the group would like to see the proposed new body restructured
slightly so that Internet services providers as a whole have more influence.
"But otherwise we are rather satisfied," Dixon said.
Friday's plan is a setback for some European government officials who openly
backed the two European groups in their failed attempt to create new domains
and take over administration of the Internet's domain name system.
"A lot of people in Europe are going to be extremely embarrassed by this
plan, and we are going to have to come up with some graceful exit options
for them," said a high-ranking manager at a European service provider, who
asked not to be named. "They have made a major contribution to reforming the
domain name system, but they lost the debate."
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