"huston we got some problems" :-)
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/0123dns.html
CORE members face defeat
Government plan could wipe out planned expansion of
domains next week.
By Sandra Gittlen
Network World Fusion, 1/23/98
Washington, D.C. - Internet Society (ISOC) officials
today acknowledged their plans for new Internet domains and a
system to run them likely will die next week when
the Clinton administration unveils its own domain overhaul (See story).
At a press conference today, ISOC President Don
Heath conceded that ISOC's Council of Registrars
(CORE) plan is unlikely to win government approval.
ISOC had planned a March start-up date for a
database, shared by several dozen companies, to
register sites in new generic top-level domains,
such as .firm, .web and .rec.
However, as reported first on Network World Fusion,
White House Internet advisor Ira Magaziner is
studying a plan that would create a new nonprofit
entity to oversee all domain naming - and that
would add a single, as yet unnamed, new top-level
domain. The plan also calls for a competitive
registration system. However, Network Solutions,
Inc., the company that now oversees .com, .org and
.net registration, would continue to run the CORE database.
If the government does reject the CORE plan, its
members would be out the $10,000 they ponied up to
hire Emergent Corp. to build a registration
database. Heath said CORE would put the database into the public domain
for use in trademark registration.
"The money is gone," Heath said. "It?s spent."
The government plan will call for the possible later
addition of four more new domains, but specifies that CORE would be
allowed to administer only one of them.
Heath said the anticipated government plan - due out
by the end of next week - is going down hard with CORE
members. "They?re going to be pissed," he said. Many
already had started taking preregistrations for domain names and
now would have to tell customers they do not exist.
CORE members accepted customer credit-card
information but had pledged not to process it until their system was up
and running. However, some "renegade" sites had
begun taking customer money with plans to forward the requests to
CORE members.
Heath said he would not be surprised if some CORE
members sue - although he doubted their chances of success. "Have you ever
tried to sue the government?" he asked.
According to Heath, no contracts were signed and no
guarantees were made about the creation of the seven gTLDs. Instead, ISOC
presented CORE as an investment in something that had
potential, he said.
But one CORE member said his customers will not buy
that. "Our customers are afraid of trademark litigation; that is why they
preregistered with us," said Andrea Naldi with Italian domain name
registrar Alinet. "Now we are getting calls about when the system will be
up." If the government approves an alternate plan, users will
have to register domain names all over again.
Another member said he is angry with the government for "micromanaging."
"I?m not happy about a drastic readjustment of
things," said Antony Van Couvering, president of NetNames USA in New York.
"After the apparent go-ahead by the government, and now the
uncertainty ... uncertainty is not good for us, for our customers or for
the Internet."
"The government has stayed out of the Internet for
10 years. Why are they getting involved now?" Heath said.
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