California Beckons For New Domain Name Body

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September 29, 1998 (3:02 AM EDT)

By Andrew Craig,

California will be the likely home for the new corporation being established to manage the Internet addressing system, according to the fifth, and perhaps final, draft of the document outlining the proposed role and structure of the new body.

Publication of the document Monday by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) came two days ahead of the deadline set by the United States government for establishing a new nonprofit corporation to relinquish its control of the Internet addressing system.

The IANA, led by University of Southern California researcher Jon Postel, manages the technical aspects of Internet-addressing under a contract with the U.S. government. Postel is expected to have a role in the new corporation, which is tentatively titled the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Many said they believed the previous version of the proposals, published Sept. 17, would be the final version before the Sept. 30 deadline stipulated in the U.S. government's white paper on domain name management published in June.

But a large number of comments were received in response to the Sept. 17 draft from governments, individuals, businesses, and Internet-industry organizations, so a further change was necessary, according to the IANA. The proposals will now be ready to present to the U.S. government Wednesday.

Many of the changes to the previous proposals are minor, but two issues surrounding the rules governing the new corporation generated considerable comment, almost universally negative, said the IANA in its introduction to the fifth draft.

The two sections, which many feared were introduced to protect the monopoly of Herndon, Va.-based Network Solutions, the company exclusively contracted to supply top-level domain names such as .com and .net, have been deleted.

The other significant change is the decision to propose that the organization be based in California. Delaware had been suggested by many as a suitable location, but California was deemed more suitable.

"California has a reasonably well-defined nonprofit corporation jurisprudence that clearly allows the corporate structure set forth in the [proposals], while Delaware's nonprofit jurisprudence is less well-developed," said the IANA in its comments on the new draft.