Fighting For Name Space On The Digital Frontier

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January 30, 1998 (12:00 AM EST)

Fighting For Name Space On The Digital Frontier

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By John Borland,

A battle over the Net's future shape has been raging in the halls of Washington, Geneva, and on the Internet for months.

The U.S. government is privatizing the Internet's domain name system, which has been maintained by federal contractors for decades. "What we've made clear is we want to move toward a more competitive system that's private and more international in nature," says Ira Magaziner, the White House adviser leading an interagency task force that has drafted federal recommendations for the new system.

"We want to move toward a more competitive system that's private and more international in nature," says Ira Magaziner, President Clinton's Internet adviser.

Magaziner's initial recommendations were released in full to the Web community Friday. And while most stakeholders say they are happy with the plan's broad outline, the details have drawn some bitter criticism.

But this is only the first round -- now that all proposals are on the table, the Internet community at large has to reach consensus on a direction for its domain name and address system. Magaziner's plan will be available for public comment for at least a month, while registrars, businesses, and political organizations push to mold it to their advantage.

Who's Minding The Shop?
Since early last year, business and political lobbying groups have been fighting over expanding the number and purpose of top-level domains -- the pieces of Net addresses such as .com, .org, and .net. Commercial domain names have been registered solely by Herndon, Va.-based Network Solutions since 1993, under contract with the National Science Foundation; the federal government wants to end the company's monopoly.

Increasing the number of top-level domains will add new and desirable real estate to the Web's map, registrars say, and scores of companies have done their best to stake claims in this proposed new territory. "If you look closely at those who are really screaming about the domain-name issue, in a sense they are the people who are trying to make a land grab," says Jim Keller, director of Harvard University's Information Infrastructure project.

But the Net has no governing body able to vote on or impose a new domain-name policy. An international group of registrars, engineers, and trademark attorneys drafted a document they hoped would impose such a governing structure last year, but widespread criticism and a lack of support from national governments has slowed their drive. The U.S. plan, which will eventually be imposed as a Department of Commerce regulation, can only be successful if it pulls legitimacy from the rest of the Internet community.

"If I'm the CEO of a big corporation, who has a business plan that invests millions of dollars in the Internet, I want to know that the essential facilities of the Internet are not run by volunteers."
-- Don Telage
Network Solutions

This lack of an official, accountable central authority has fueled the drive for a new system. Much of the Net's central infrastructure, including "root" servers needed to point Web addresses to actual computers around the world, are now maintained by a loose collection of academics and volunteers. This was fine when the Internet was a tool for academic research, but needs to change now that the network serves as a conduit for tens of millions of dollars in electronic commerce daily, critics say.

"If I'm the CEO of a big corporation, who has a business plan that invests millions of dollars in the Internet, I want to know that the essential facilities of the Internet are not run by volunteers, not run [only] under daylight hours, and are in a secure facility," says Network Solutions senior vice president Don Telage.

Magaziner's group proposed the creation of a new nonprofit corporation that would take over much of this central responsibility. This proposal appears acceptable to most, aside from those who hoped to fill this governing role themselves.

But Magaziner is prepared for dissent. "If the [green paper] draft just gets torn to pieces and everyone thinks it's terrible, we'll start over again and take the criticisms and try to produce something better," he says. "If the draft with some modifications can eventually reach consensus, then we'll go with that as a plan."

Next: The CORE of the debate

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