http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/11552.html
US Domain Name Plan Assailed Again
by Michael Stutz
3:19pm 8.Apr.98.PDT
The long and winding road toward
a new naming and address system
for the Internet just hit
another nasty curve.
The Internet Council of
Registrars (CORE), an
international group which
developed its plan for
domain-name administration
working under a governance
framework, has released its most
scathing criticism yet of the
White House plan to shift the
coordination of the Domain Name
System (DNS) from the government
to the private sector this fall.
In late January, the Clinton
administration released its
"green paper" draft proposal for
phasing out US government
involvement in running the
Internet's naming and address
system. The new system, said the
paper, should be based on four
principles: Internet stability,
competition, a private-sector
coordination process, and
representation by the Net's
diverse users. But CORE
officials said the paper falls
short on some of its primary
goals.
"Internet self-governance,
competition, and international
consensus will simply disappear
into a bottomless regulatory
morass controlled by one
government," CORE chairman Alan
Hanson said in the release.
Hanson's blast comes after the
official close of the comment
period on the Department of
Commerce's green paper draft.
Last month, CORE issued a formal
response expressing their
unhappiness with the plan.
In a nutshell, CORE's beef with
the green paper is that it will
leave the US government
sanctioning the existing
monopoly of Network Solutions --
current stewards of the InterNIC
-- and that the government is
acutally trying to "take over
the Internet" rather than lead
it toward self-governance.
"The green paper speaks for
itself," said David W. Maher,
chairman of the Policy Oversight
Committee, the volunteer group
which founded CORE. "It's an
assertion of jurisdiction [over
the Internet] by the US
government, which is arguable.
"Granted, they've been paying
for some of the work that Jon
Postel does at IANA (Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority),"
Maher said, "but the Internet is
a global institution, and to say
that just because money is being
paid for a research project, I
don't think that entitles the US
government to say that it has
control of the root servers -
three of them which are outside
of the US."
Ira Magaziner, Clinton's
cyberguru, said that the
revisions process on the green
paper will begin in the next few
weeks.
"We're reviewing all the
comments and are meeting on it
starting this week," said
Magaziner. "I'm hoping myself to
have all the comments read
within the next day or two. And
then we'll probably agree to
meet with any groups that want
to meet with us to give another
shot at it.... In the next few
weeks we'll try to come up with
a revised paper and see if we
can build consensus about it."
But just in case Magaziner needs
help, CORE today released a
selective analysis of the
situation, with comments from
corporations, governments,
organizations, and private
individuals worldwide who either
support the CORE initiative or
criticize -- sometimes harshly
-- the American proposal.
Postel, whose IANA controls the
administration of numeric IP
addresses and also manages the
.us TLD, was among the critics.
"We believe that the root server
functions should be moved as
soon as the new organization is
incorporated," Postel wrote. "We
suggest that competitive
domain-name registrations begin
using the CORE model immediately
thereafter."
On the day the White House draft
was first rolled out, Postel had
said that he was "very pleased
that the work to date has
resulted in this discussion
draft," and that there were
large areas of agreement between
the opposing camps.
According to Magaziner, this is
where things stand now.
"I spent a couple hours with Jon
Postel last week, and we talked
through things and I think we're
roughly in sync now," said
Magaziner. "And so I think we
just have to decide how to
respond to the comments, and
revise the paper in the next
couple of weeks."
Jay Fenello, president of .per
TLD providers Iperdome, Inc.,
still feels very positive about
the White House draft as do, he
said, several of the groups
quoted in today's CORE release.
"Many of the firms referenced in
the CORE press release only
marginally supported some of the
concepts as described by CORE,
not the entire CORE plan," said
Fenello. "These same firms
supported the US lead process."
This includes criticism from
some foreign governments on the
plan being too US-centric, which
Magaziner said was "based on
misunderstanding."
"Our intention all along has
been to make this an
international nonprofit effort
that would eventually take over
these functions, so we don't
intend for it to be US-centric,"
he said.
Apparently, the effort does not
intend to give special treatment
to any one group, either --
regardless of that group's
collective experience or
previous investment in the
process.
CORE's members, many of whom are
intimately involved with
technical Net addressing issues,
have invested significantly in
their plan. They currently boast
a worldwide network of 87
registrars in 23 countries, who
had to pass a screening process
and then pay US$10,000.
"The CORE group is one among
many groups who submitted
comments," said Magaziner. "We
need to try to get the sense of
those comments and revise the
paper accordingly. But the CORE
is just one group, and there are
a lot of different groups out
there."
"I can't imagine any other
scenario than CORE proceeding,"
said Don Heath, Internet Society
president. "[It] is a truly
international event that's been
public for two years.... It's
the way that the Internet was
developed, it was done in the
same methodology, it's the same
people, it's a logical
happening, and it must proceed."
With their differences still to
be worked out, Magaziner said
CORE and the other commenting
parties can expect to see a
working proposal very soon.
"I think we hope to have a
proposal that we can start
implementing [within] weeks, and
not months, because we don't
have that much time," Magaziner
said. "I don't want to give an
exact date, because I don't have
one yet."
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