NSI Is Delaying Competition, Lawmakers Say

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July 22, 1999 (3:40 PM EDT)

By Mary Mosquera,

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- After pressing lawmakers to examine the operations of the organization administering the Internet, Network Solutions, Inc., the previous sole provider of the .com domain name, found itself in the hot seat on Thursday.

Republican and Democrat lawmakers on the House Commerce committee held a hearing to grill NSI about why it was delaying competition in the .com, .net, and .org domain name space.

The infighting about who has authority over domain names could impact the stability of the Internet, a Commerce official said.

NSI, which is having to give up its monopoly in registering the most popular domain names, and other groups are concerned because ICANN's policy-making meetings are closed. ICANN, the non-profit organization to which the Commerce Department transferred Net administration, also imposed a $1 fee on each domain name per year.

By Thursday's hearing, ICANN had dropped the $1 fee and promised to open its board meetings, the next one is taking place in Santiago, Chile in August.

NSI does not acknowledge ICANN's authority over Internet functions, said NSI CEO Jim Rutt. "ICANN is not necessary for competition," he said.

NSI has been in negotiations with the Commerce Department for months over pricing, authority, and intellectual-property issues. But it has not signed a framework agreement with Commerce, nor a registrar accreditation with ICANN.

NSI also manages the domain name database registry under a cooperative contract with the government, which expires in September 2000. ICANN has threatened to reassign the registry with another company. Relocating the registry would be unsettling for the Internet, said Andrew Pincus, counsel for Commerce. "There will be a lot of instability in the short-term," he said.

Rutt said ICANN failed to live up to its mandate to operate by "true industry consensus," but he didn't know what else needed to be done to achieve consensus. "Consensus is like pornography -- you know it when you see it," Rutt said.

When lawmakers accused NSI of delaying competition to milk its monopoly, Rutt said, "I'd much rather spend my time competing and growing my business than fighting over these issues."

NSI recently opened its direct-registration capabilities to competition among five test companies after much delay.

Consumer advocates also testified at the hearing, saying domain name holders and individual Internet users were not part of ICANN's consensus process and ICANN is not accountable to any government or entity, said Jamie Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology.

However, Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain said, "ICANN has inherited an extraordinarily difficult situation, with high expectations all around, and with almost no discretionary room to move."