MAJOR NEWS FROM THE OVAL OFFICE//GO JIMMY CHIN GO!
June 6, 1998
U.S. Gives Up Last Vestige of Control Over
Basic Internet Structure
By AMY HARMON
The Clinton administration renounced the last vestige of control
by the U.S. government over the Internet's basic structure on
Friday, acknowledging that the computer network had grown
too big, too global and too commercial to be overseen by any one
nation.
That last vestige is the distribution and management of Internet
addresses, an issue that has become the focus of increasingly heated
debates and litigation as companies, institutions and individuals found
that the land rush to cyberspace was being slowed because all the best
addresses had already been snapped up.
In a long-anticipated policy paper, the administration said it would
turn over the management of the Internet's address system to an
international nonprofit group that could represent a range of
constituencies from large corporations struggling to protect their
trademarks and market their products on line to Saturday night Web
surfers.
The final policy dispenses with many of the more controversial
government mandates that had produced widespread opposition to
early drafts of the report. Instead, adopting a scheme that could
become a general model for Internet self governance, the government
will abdicate the sticky task of building a consensus across national
boundaries, private and public sectors, and big and small businesses to
the as-yet-unformed group.
While governments are not soon likely to abandon attempts to control
aspects of the Internet within their territories that violate moral or
cultural values -- pornography, pedophilia, gambling and invasion of
privacy are the most popular targets -- the ultimate futility of
localized efforts to place limits on a global network is widely
expected to result in more and more Internet self-regulation.
The question of who gets what address on the Internet does not strike
at the core values of any one group or culture, but it has become an
increasingly contentious issue. That is because while real estate in
cyberspace is theoretically unlimited, the government has only
authorized the use of a handful of "top-level domains," the suffixes at
the ends of Internet addresses that are supposed to denote what type a
site is.
The ".edu" domain, for example, is restricted for use by schools and
universities, while ".gov" is available only to governments, and ".mil"
can be used only by the military.
In addition, "org" is supposed to denote nonprofit organizations, and
".net" is given out only to Internet service providers.
That leaves everyone else, from the largest corporations to your Aunt
Mae, vying for a domain address that ends in ".com," which the
government invented in 1990 to denote commercial sites. That was
before the World Wide Web was invented, and no one dreamed that
the demand for Internet domain addresses would be so great.
In a frantic electronic land-grab that began about three years ago,
those seeking to stake out an on-line identity have rapidly scooped up
many of the most desirable domain addresses. This has already
resulted in wild speculation. Last week, it was reported that
Shopping.com had paid $750,000 in cash and stock to buy its domain
name from the person who had registered it for $70.
The yet-to-be-established oversight group would have the authority to
designate dozens of new top-level domains -- like ".web" or ".store,"
for instance -- and would arbitrate disputes between address-seekers.
But Internet analysts said that the process itself represented a
significant first step toward the creation of a governing body for the
Internet independent of governments, trade associations, or
international bodies like the United Nations or the World Trade
Organization.
Although it makes some traditional policy makers nervous,
self-governance is a model that is gaining support from a broad
spectrum of Internet users, including Ira Magaziner, the senior White
House advisor who oversaw the rocky evolution of the domain name
policy articulated in Friday's report.
Last week, America Online's chairman, Steve Case, called for the
formation of an "Internet Alliance" to "avoid outrageous local and
national laws that would strangle the growth of the medium." And
European Union Commissioner Martin Bangemann has proposed an
international charter to deal with issues like data encryption.
Advocates of various forms of self-governance argue that the medium
is changing too rapidly to be effectively monitored by typical
governments and is too far-flung to be constrained by them.
"We think it is in the best interest of the Internet and the best interest
of the United States for this medium to grow and become ubiquitous,"
Mr. Magaziner said. "And the government's getting out of the way of
its management is the best way to achieve that."
Hatched almost 30 years ago by the Defense Department as a closed
conduit for military and academic communications, the network,
under various names, has spawned prodigious progeny. Today, the
Internet is a global nervous system linking 30 million host computers
and an estimated 102 million users, according to Matrix Information
and Directory Services in Austin, Tex.
And while the United States has long dominated the Internet, its
fastest growth is now in countries like the Netherlands and Brazil.
The administration's earlier plan drew criticism that despite its
assertions to the contrary, the United States was seeking to exert too
much control over how the Internet was run.
But some of the plan's harshest critics were particularly pleased with
the Commerce Department's final report.
"This clearly shows the U.S. government heard the international
community and listened to them," said Don Heath, president of the
Internet Society, which has long overseen the technology of the
network. "They showed they understood the dynamics of the Internet,
the need for bottom-up, grass-roots consensus building. This is a
victory for the Internet and a victory for self-governance."
The government has been withdrawing from the Internet since the
network began its exponential growth in the early 1990s. In 1992, the
government agreed to let commercial traffic use the Internet's main
pathway, known as the backbone. In 1995, it relinquished the
administration of the backbone to commercial entities.
But it has always retained control of the critical function of assigning
addresses. Under a five-year contract with the National Science
Foundation, all registrations for the major Internet domains are
currently performed exclusively by Network Solutions of Herndon,
Va., which charges first-time registrants $70.
When the Commerce Department issued a draft domain name policy
in January, many would-be competitors complained that it protected
Network Solutions' monopoly. Under the new plan, such companies
could compete with Network Solutions when its contract expires on
Sept. 30 -- if the nonprofit organization authorizes such competition.
In one recent case the Prema Toy Co., which owns the trademarks on
the character Gumby and his horse, Pokey, sued a 12-year-old Web
designer whose parents had registered "pokey.org" because the boy's
nickname is Pokey. |
