PAB magaziner/dns/core/iana/isoc@news

From: Sascha Ignjatovic (sascha@isoc.vienna.org)
Date: Wed Apr 08 1998 - 18:31:26 PDT


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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