Small Business Administration Objects to .US Deal

rlarner writes: "The United States Small Business Administration has written a letter to the NTIA that challenges the .US sale. The SBA claims that the UDRP and sunrise period were not properly enacted - they needed comment periods, etc. The letter is here." We've done a few previous stories about the handling of .us. Free registration of second-level domains under .us were supposed to go live shortly.

Comments

Re:I'm probably going to get flamed for this...

[wavecentral]

No, there is nothing wrong with Sunrise. But the letter is not questioning whether the Sunrise (trademark) rule should be in the contract with NeuStar, but that the NTIA didn't answer the questions the SBA provide, and the NTIA initial sought with the RTQ process.

Also, SBA is stating that the NTIA is skirting any questions by thinking the contract to NeuStar is exempt from Legislative process.

Personally, I wish NetSol was given this much analysis and review before it sunk it's teeth into getting the Gov't contract for TLD's

The least we can do is follow our own advice on making domain delegation fair and not *#$k our own country domain registration. The NTIA is a classic example of the Gov't doing shoddy work and claiming to say, "We don't need to answer your questions."

More on underlying legal theories

[Froomkin]

If you would like a more extensive discussion of the underlying US constitutional and statutory legal issues, please see my article Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution, 50 Duke L.J. 17 (2000), also available in tidy .pdf format.

Here is the abstract:

The Internet relies on an underlying centralized hierarchy built into the domain name system (DNS) to control the routing for the vast majority of Internet traffic. At its heart is a single data file, known as the "root." Control of the root provides singular power in cyberspace.

This Article first describes how the United States government found itself in control of the root. It then describes how, in an attempt to meet concerns that the United States could so dominate an Internet chokepoint, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) summoned into being the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a formally private nonprofit California corporation. DoC then signed contracts with ICANN in order to clothe it with most of the U.S. government's power over the DNS, and convinced other parties to recognize ICANN's authority. ICANN then took regulatory actions that the U.S. Department of Commerce was unable or unwilling to make itself, including the imposition on all registrants of Internet addresses of an idiosyncratic set of arbitration rules and procedures that benefit third-party trademark holders.

Professor Froomkin then argues that the use of ICANN to regulate in the stead of an executive agency violates fundamental values and policies designed to ensure democratic control over the use of government power, and sets a precedent that risks being expanded into other regulatory activities. He argues that DoC's use of ICANN to make rules either violates the APA's requirement for notice and comment in rulemaking and judicial review, or it violates the Constitution's nondelegation doctrine. Professor Froomkin reviews possible alternatives to ICANN, and ultimately proposes a decentralized structure in which the namespace of the DNS is spread out over a transnational group of "policy partners" with DoC.

Re:Excuse an off-topic question, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the initials of the Afrikaans-language name of the country: Zuid Afrika.

Re:I like this "Sunrise" stuff about like a vampir

[RazzleFrog]

Well since you are registering a third level domain - ***.ks.us - you should be fine. They are not getting rid of the locality specific domains and Sony doesn't have any special claim on third level domains. You can

From the site:
Existing .US registrants (domain name holders) within the "locality space" will retain rights to their existing Internet addresses. In fact, existing domain name holders will benefit from many of the operational improvements and improved security and service levels NeuStar will introduce within .US.

Re:What will happen to state domain heirarchys?

[RazzleFrog]

At the risk of a redundant mod:

From the site:
Existing .US registrants (domain name holders) within the "locality space" will retain rights to their existing Internet addresses. In fact, existing domain name holders will benefit from many of the operational improvements and improved security and service levels NeuStar will introduce within .US.

It's not "for use anywhere"

[marnanel]

But the .us TLD isn't "for use anywhere"-- unlike the generic TLDs such as .com and .org, it's only for US citizens, residents and businesses. So it does have some level of specificity.

Not free.

[AnotherBlackHat]

Registration of SLD under the TLD .us is not free.
The fees charged are registrar are $5.50 per name per year, more for the first year. This is explained in schedule f)

This is about the same amount that Network Solutions charges ($6.00 a year) so you can expect to pay approximately the same amount for a SLD under .us as you do currently for one under .com.

P.S. Network Solutions took in over $600,000,000 last year, about 1/5 of which was from external registrars, the rest being from their own registration service.