CORE Dumps Domain Name Plan

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January 30, 1998 (12:00 AM EST)

By John Borland,

Domain name registrars in the U.S. are applauding the Commerce Department's plan for revamping the Internet's address system, but an international group is disappointed some of its recommendations were overlooked.

"Overall, the plan is right on the mark," said John Frangie, CEO of Image Online Design, a small registrar that hopes to implement a new .web top-level domain. "While there are always minor points to be clarified, the document as a whole appears workable and fair."

The U.S. government's "green paper" on top-level domain registration, released Friday, is the product of months of negotiation between registrars, corporations with trademark interests, and political organizations. Led by White House adviser Ira Magaziner, the effort aims to privatize the domain name registration system and open the current monopoly to competition.

"We are pleased with the framework," said Gabe Battista, CEO of Network Solutions. "We think it can be used as a vehicle for the transition to competition in a stable way."

NSI holds the sole contract from the U.S. government on commercial registration of the most common top-level domain names, such as .com, .org, and .net. Many other companies, called registrars, accept domain name applications and process them with NSI.

An international group of registrars, which has its own plan for a new system, was less impressed. The Council of Registrars, based in Geneva and working under the auspices of the U.S. Internet Society, the World Intellectual Property Association, and the International Telecommunications Union, wanted to begin offering seven new top-level domains this spring. CORE's plan now appears to be in trouble, since the green paper ignored many of its recommendations.

David Maher, who leads CORE's Policy Oversight Committee, said the paper lacked an international focus. "It is too protective of NSI and other U.S. interests," Maher said. "If this is treated as a U.S. solution to U.S. problems, people outside the U.S. are not going to be happy. I think that's a very severe limitation on the viability of the green paper platform."

Another CORE member was more optimistic. "You have to remember that this is a starting discussion point," said Shaun Dolan, general manager of Internet Domain Registry Corporation in Vancouver, British Columbia. "We see a number of problems with it, but it is generally in line with CORE's philosophy of a free and open system."

At the Internet Summit in Washington next week, CORE registrars will continue to push to include their seven proposed domains, including .arts, .firm, .info, .nom, .rec, .store, and .web, Dolan said. But its member businesses also will begin registering customers under other new domain names -- including the familiar .com, as soon as NSI's monopoly is opened to competition, sometime between now and October.

"As a business, we'll have to compete with NSI on whatever playing field is available, including their own," said John Kane, the general manager of Corporate Domains, another CORE member.

Magaziner's paper proposes five new top-level domains, to be managed by a newly created nonprofit corporation. How this corporation operates and the ways registrars can assign the new names will be hashed out over the next month, NSI's Battista said.

Under the government plan, a single registry company would be responsible for managing the main database for each new top-level domain. Individual registrars would submit their clients' domain applications to these registry companies. NSI currently holds both functions for the com, .org, and .net top-level domains, but would have to split itself up under Magaziner's recommendations.

The nature of this split and the functions of the new registries will be contentious points of the ongoing debate, Battista said. "I think the discussions of the next few months will help us evolve what those business models might be," he said. "Some may be for profit, some may be nonprofit. But all of them will have to operate in a way such that registrars have an equal playing field."