Green Paper Ripe For Debate

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January 30, 1998 (4:28 PM EST)

By Mary Mosquera,

The White House's plan for domain name registration is not a done deal, said a government official on Friday.

Clinton's technology adviser Ira Magaziner released on the World Wide Web early Friday a "green paper" outlining the administration's recommendations for a new way to register Internet domain names.

The document reflects "a huge amount of consensus" among the government and the private companies and individuals that provided input on the plan, said J. Beckwith Burr, associate administrator for Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

However, the administration's proposals are not set in stone, Burr said. "We hope to refrain from bomb-throwing and continue consensus building," she said. "The Internet community is diverse, with divergent views."

The White House seeks comments on the draft policy before final recommendations are made. Comments may be mailed to the Department of Commerce or sent via electronic mail to dns@ntia.doc.gov.

Burr did not know how long the comment period would last, but by law it must be at least 30 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. The proposal will be published in the Federal Register next week, she said.

Despite the attention on domain names, the impact of the new policy on the average Internet user will be "practically minimal," she said. However, Burr expects competition for domain names to lower prices and give consumers more choices.

"Our goal is to transition to private sector management of Internet names and addresses in a way that maintains the stability of the Internet," said Burr, adding that the aim of the plan is to encourage competition, innovation, and individual freedom.

Registrars could offer customers "one-stop shopping," from designing a Website to registering a domain name, Burr said.

Not everyone approves of the plan as it stands.

The green paper is a 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.

David Maher, chairman of the oversight committee, said his group agrees on goals of the green paper but disagrees on the time table. "We are continuing discussions with Magaziner," he said.

Also, the recommendations do not include the existence of separate, competing networks of domain name registrars, as CORE has proposed. CORE, a group of international companies and organizations, said it will launch a registry of new Internet domain names on March 1. Prospective registrars have invested $10,000 each to help build the infrastructure, said the group, which proposes seven new generic names: .firm, .shop, .web, .arts, .rec, .info, and .nom.

Andy Sernovitz, president of the Association of Interactive Media, a Washington trade association that includes America Online and Intel, praised the green paper. "Everyone's rights are protected with the government policy," he said.

"This definitively puts CORE out of business," Sernovitz said. "The CORE system was a rip-off and Ira Magaziner had the insight to see right through that."