9:43 AM May 2, 1997

NEW SELF-GOVERNING INTERNET DOMAIN SYSTEM ?

Geneva 1 May (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Nearly 60 telecommunication companies, internet service providers and some equipment producers, at a meeting of the Internet Society here in Geneva, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding supporting a new self-governing system for registering Internet domain addresses and a global mechanism for resolving disputes.

Some 15 others like French Telecom have indicated they would join the effort.

The protagonists describe the move as aimed at maintaining the 'open structures' that characterise the internet, and enable its being a truly global institution where most of the future participants will come from outside North America, and particularly the developing world which has much at stake in ensuring an open net work system.

However, there are some major parties that have not so far joined, and perhaps would try and oppose and block the effort. The European Union has indicated some reservations, and the position of the US is not very clear.

Those standing out include a world telecommunication giant, the US AT&T corporation, and the present enterprise in the US (Network Solutions) which is now having a monopoly in assigning and registered domain names, and thus rakes in an annual $200 million in revenue, and would not like to see competition in this area.

But others who have joined and signed the MOU include the MCI telecom enterprise (an AT&T rival) and Digital Corp (a computer manufacturer), though they have expressed some reservations, principally relating to the need for the new system to evolve by consensus.

The internet was created and supervised by the National Science Foundation which under a contract left the management of the domain registration and registry to the California-based Science Applications International Corp. which operated through its subsidiary Network Solutions Incorporated.

The internet architecture was conceived by the Pentagon (to enable worldwide decentralised communications that could operate in the event of a nuclear war) and then made available for civilian uses, mostly academic researchers and other non-profit groups.

Recently, the US government which was behind these, but with the system operated under the supervision of the NSF, decided to turn it over to private parties. The NSF itself has since notified that it was ending its contract with the Science Applications International Corporation and its domain registry subsidiary NSI.

From a small fee to register domain names, the NSI now charges $100 for registration, and this could go up too.

This would have created a vacuum, where the existing monopoly registry would have expanded itself and benefited, creaming off the market, and depending or catering mainly to the United States internet providers and users.

A solution would have been for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to try to step in and through its governing bodies create some rules. But with so many vested interests involved, industry lobbies would easily have brought the process to a standstill.

It was in this situation, where the system would be developing without any governance and representing the global internet community and ensuring equity, that the international internet societies and a number of active national and regional affiliates stepped in and through the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) and have put forward the solutions in the form of the MOU.

The IAHC proposals would change the way internet generic top level domain names are assigned and managed, and these have been accepted at the three-day meeting in Geneva, which was hosted by the International Telecommunications Union and chaired by an UNCTAD official, Dr. Bruno Lanvin, the World Coordinator of UNCTAD's Trade Point Programme.

Lanvin told the opening meeting that for the new system to succeed it must meet three requirements: efficiency, fairness and sustainability.

To be efficient, the proposal needs to be manageable, quickly implementable and open to improvements -- allowing the internet community to keep benefiting from what works well and offering alternatives when problems arise or can be anticipated.

For fairness, credit must be given to those who have been early promoters, and those who have invested time and resources for its development. At the same time domain names must be administered in a way fair to all users, not only current users but those of tomorrow, in particular users from developing countries.

The system should also be economically sustainable, technically adaptable and institutionally robust.

While the current US monopoly registry-provider would no doubt be affected (being deprived of a global monopoly and ability to rake in profits), the discussions at the meeting were described by the President of the Internet Society Robert Shaw and Lanvin as remarkable for absence of any anti-US feelings.

The pioneering work done by the United States government in creating the internet, and wanting to give it up as it has come of age and has experienced a population explosion (with some 50-60 million users worldwide, but mostly in North America and Europe).

But the NSI is mounting an opposition presenting the proposed new system as an anti-US effort to take governance away from the US. The NSI wants the 'market' to determine the future evolution of the domain name registry system, with minimal governmental supervision, and by this it means the US Federal Communications Commission.

But the entire internet issue has gone beyond the domain registry and technology issue, and now involves political, large commercial, cultural and other interests - and where the 'market' cannot function in isolation and on its own. Either there will be many national governments using national laws to exercise jurisdiction (some of this is already seen in the determination of national authorities to police the internet, say for pornographic or hate material or against international crime) or some move for international jurisdiction through an international treaty, note some observers.

The new system, in so far as the domain registration and usage is concerned, is trying to maintain the internet's open architecture and accessibility and self-governance, both ensuring transparency and equity, so that public interest would be served.

If the existing internet service providers in the US, do not join and cooperate (and build into their internet servers the new addresses that will come, and thus prevent the use of the new domain names and communication flows to them) and the NSI tries to use its power and influence to block it, one of two things could happen: the new effort would collapse, and internet would remain a US (commercial and user) dominated instrument, or the new proposed plan would be backed by others and would evolve, but with two rival systems -- one the NSI backed system and its generic domain names, and another with new domain names -- that may or may not intercommunicate in the same way as the internet does.

Much will depend on what the internet users' community would do. Experience has shown that this community does not like any controls, whether by governments, or private parties and monopolies. They may exert themselves to move things in the direction of the new system, and ensure that internet evolves, as originally intended, to be a universal system with self-governance.

The new move would not interfere with the present seven top-level generic domain names, generally accessible to all internet users (since they are in the computer systems of the internet servers, and enable messages addressed to these names to transit and communicate). These generic names preceded by a dot in the address are '.com' (to denote commercial organizations), '.net' (network providers) or '.org' (organizations), '.gov' (governments), '.edu' (educational institutions), '.mil' for the military, '.int' (international treaty organizations).

New additional generic domain names would be introduced, and the registration done in regional centres -- with some 28 registration centres in the four regions of the world to provide this service -- with the 28 being selected through a lottery. Disputes over names (which are trade marks or industrial property) are to be settled through the WIPO's arbitration and dispute Settlement System.