NSI Roughed Up in Congressional Hearing

phred writes "It didn't turn out quite the way NSI had set it up. They wanted House Commerce Committee chair Rep. Thomas Bliley, representing their area of Virginia, to beat up on ICANN at Thursday's hearing into the unfolding competitive environment for the Domain Name System registry. Instead, panel members turned their attention to new NSI boss Jim Rutt, who didn't do so good. The New York Times is on the case, but C-Span is not, as they are not apparently planning to show the hearing. " (Usual NYT "free registration required" to read the article.)

Comments

Re:N$I Sucks

[thlinuxgod]

Goto www.nic.cx. Their domains are real cheep, for the first 2 years and setup is 20 UK pounds and each year after is 10 UK pounds. I have my own domain with then, madlinux.cx, and it's great. I tried to use NSI to register and it complained about my DNS and told me my IP was not registered. The irony is how do I get my own domain if I have to have my IP registered? Go figure.

Why we need the $1 tax

[Evro]

I really think it would be a terrible disaster if domain name registration was free of charge. I mean, you see the amount of squatting that's going on now, and now you actually have to pay $70. If it were free, what would stop me, you, anybody from going around and buying thousands and thousands of names every day? Wired had a story a couple of months ago about some geek club in Europe who registered 75,000 (using a cgi script or something) of the remaining 4 letter domain names with no intention of purchasing them. I think what should be done is a $15 charge should be levied upon domain registration. ICANN should get NONE of this money. It should all be donated to charity or something worthwhile. Not lining Esther Dyson's pockets. Also, if payment is not received within a week or something, it should automatically go back into the pool. I still think squatting will be a huge problem under "my" system, but not as bad as it would be under the free-registration system. I thought for a minute that the government was making a good move getting domain name registration out of the hands of NSI, but they put it into the inept hands of ICANN, or as they should be known, I CAN'T. I don't see why the government didn't just take over if they wanted there to be no charge. I mean, if they gave NSI the monopoly, why not just take it back? If they are so concerned about costing people money to register, why don't THEY just give out the names on a First-come-first-served basis? I just don't get it. I don't understand what the point of ICANN was, is, or ever will be.

Re:Why we need the $1 tax

[edhall]

When ICANN was formed, its bylaws stated that it would fund itself through domain registration. Just how this would be done was left unsaid, but it was tacitly assumed that some sort of a fee would be arranged. When ICANN did the obvious thing with the $1/domain fee, NSI turned its FUD-generating PR apparatus loose, and swore publicly that they'd never pay ICANN a dime. As a result, ICANN--which was to help broker between the several domain authorities--is in serious debt, and thus pretty much unable to do much of anything.

As for Esther Dyson, she's one of those people who has long been working toward intra-industry coordination. She sits on the boards of a number of organizations Slashdotters might know about, such as the EFF and Cygnus Solutions. (She chaired the EFF until stepping down to head ICANN.) I'm mystified why some folks here want to demonize her or put her in the same catagory as magazine pundits.

-Ed

ICANN and Money

[mattdm]

Guess what? ICANN is a non-profit corporation. No money goes towards lining anyone's pockets -- certainly not the unpaid board members'. In fact, ICANN currently is losing money. Any organization doing what ICANN is supposed to do will have many legitimate expenses. Where is the money supposed to come from? The tooth fairy?

The people criticizing ICANN seem to be either a) companies with money to gain, b) wackos who think the United States owns and/or should own the Internet, or c) completely uneducated.

Check out the ICANN web site for more information.

--

Re:ICANN and Money

[rs79]

Render unto me a fucking break. ICANN is non
profit ?

Joe Sims, an attorney in Los Angeles offered Jon
Postel some free legal advice. He then went on
to set up ICANN and the board. ICANN admitteed
yesterday they owe him $500,000 of their
$800,000.00 debt.

Lessee, he picks the board, then they pick him
to do their very expensive legal work. Jon
Postel did all this on under a million a year
with no legal, budget. Heloooooo?

OTOH, ICANN flys all over the world and stays
in 5 Star hotels. Non-profits with 10 board
members racking up $5000 a night in lodging
alone is typical of the abuses non-profits
suffer from. Other problems are: lack of
accountability (who are these guys accountable
to? Nobody except the Congress of the United
States and the California State Attorney
General) and legitimacy - does the NTIA have
the authority to turn off an American publicly
traded company (NSI) a.

Then there is the question of legitimacy. The
US Government white paper said the newco
that manages names and numbers will result
from Internet self organization. While
Ira Magaziner was saying this to us in far
away places like Geneva and Singapore where
a bunch of us traveled to attend IFWP
conferences, he was running around with big
business picking a board that doesn't have
a clue how the net works, and included one
IAHC committee memeber and Mike Roberts,
who is as good as.

We were told they were selected because they
had no previous involvement in the DNS.

Right. Read Esthers book and see how
uninvolved you think she is.

I've been involved in this for 3 years
before ICANN was created and don't consider
myselt uneducated. As an advocate of a
cost-recovery model for TLD management I
am not looking for a windfall, and I DON'T
think the USG should control the Interent.

ICANN is a bad thing. A REALLY bad thing. It
represents nothing less than a global
psuedo-government regulatory agency - this
was tried wth OSI and failed miserably.

Forget NSI - that't not your bigegst problem
and will correct itself when true competition
comes about - new top level domains, not just
a bunch of new sales agents for NSI which is
all these registrars are.

To say nothing of the fact the TM abuses that
can occur because names are now $9 to registrars

Do a whois on intel-inc.com for example. $9
gets you the right to buldgeon Intel.

Well, thank God for competition...

mcdonalds-inc.com anybody ? $9.

www.internic.net

[gregm]

This whole thing pisses me off... I saw it coming years ago but couldn't think of a way to do anything about it. We were led to believe that the Internic was a not for profit division of Netwinksolutions. When they started charging for domain names I didn't bitch I realized it takes some serious hardware to handle that database. I watched and helped network solutions create a monopoly.

Now Nutwink Solutins is practically hosting websites! Where in the hell do they get off? Where was Uncle Sam when I was starting out? Why didn't I get setup with a buttload of money and talk about a captive audience!

I don't understand why we can run our own DNS but not register domain names and host a little piece of the whois database just like we do with dns. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems doable to me.

And why does www.internic.net have a link to netwadsolutins right at the top but no link to register.com or any of the others?

And this is the clincher..... how can the whois database be theirs? I typed in the info for 60 or 70 domain names and no one has mentioned anything to me about being a non-paycheck getting, data entry person who works for Nitwit Solutions.

Did I mention this pisses me off? :)

The only REAL solution to this whole problem....

[trims]

DNS is an essential service for everyone on the internet. I don't think it's a good idea in any sense to have a single commercial organization at the controls, as NSI has been for the last upteen years.

Instead, what needs to happen is this (and I realize that it's partway there, but not fully):

1. The US Congress needs to pass a law giving ICANN the same (or similar, since it won't have Constitutional protection) status as the USPS. That is, ICANN sets the standards, makes the rules, and is the final authority on decisions.
2. ICANN needs to be given the authority to decide name conflicts decisively. That is, ICANN is the final arbiter, not the court system. Of course, ICANN should be obligated to spell out the conflict resolution system in advance, in detail.
3. ICANN does NOT actually run DNS. They contract it out like they are now to various registries.
4. $1 (or something like that) should be charged each Registry for a domain. That is, ICANN should get $1 for each domain registered. ICANN should use this for operating costs, etc. They should NOT be allowed to accept outside money of any kind, and should be required to run a balanced budget. Therefore, all their income should come from domain registration fees, insulating them from pressure by big corporate donors, etc.
5. ICANN should specify that IT OWNS ALL REGISTRATION INFO, and THAT IT MAY NOT BE USED FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN REGISTRATION-RELATED ACTIVITIES. No hording the info between Registries. No using it for bulk emailing. No funny business, period.
6. ICANN should have the legal authority to fine or revoke a Registry's contract should they fail to live up to the standards, or are caught doing something naughty.

I realized that some people will think that this centralizes a lot of power in a gov't-sanctioned organization, but I think it's really the only sane way to keep everything in line. If it's done properly, and the controlling board of ICANN is both fiscally and politically insulated, then I think it would be far and away the best thing for us.

And I thought M$ was bad. Sheesh, I've been around for over 10 years now, and NSI has gone from a nice, little company to a royally assinine monopoly that just needs to be taken apart, brick by brick. I'd LOVE to see Congress strip NSI of its Registry status, sue them for trademark infringement, and fine the living hell out of them for illegal appropriation of gov't property (the whois database).

-Erik

The real DNS situation

[sjames]

ICANN is assuming authority that it doesn't have. So is NSI. In truth, there is no law or RFC of any kind giving anyone authority over DNS. The closest thing to that is an RFC that states the current convention for TLDs.

Any organiation or individual is perfectly free to alter their DNS configuration to use any available root server they like. There are a number of root servers out there that already recognize .nom .per .art .shop .biz .web (yes, there is a tangled.web). In addition, they have NS records pointing back to the .com .net and .org namespace.

DNS was established by convention only for the common good (by no authority at all, basically because Jon Postel said so). The thing needed to change the convention is enough 'buy in' from DNS admins on major networks. Once a few support it, the rest will give in to customer pressure. There is no real cost to an ISP, they just add a few lines to their bind configuration.

The US government can choose to place ICANN over NSI, or even cancel NSI's contract and demand that they turn over the whois and DNS records. That is legal because NSI was CONTRACTED to run the DNS for .net, .com, and .org. If the people of the net don't like it, they can (and should) decide on an alternate system and use it. There is no need for permission.

I strongly advocate a careful and considered decision on the issue. A smooth transition is in everybody's best interest.

DNS should be widely distributed, and show no national favoritism. It should not prefer corperate over personal and small business. It should not get involved in trademark disputes. If someone has a genuine claim, let them take it to court, and let the court order the name holder to de-register or transfer the name. Individual registrars can (and should) offer trademark lookup services, if possable, to help prevent disputes in the first place, but it's up to the registrant to make a final decision.

Registration should NOT be free and open at the same time. If someone wants to run a free registration TLD for non-profit organizations, they should require proof that the registrant is in fact a non-profit organization. Otherwise, it should be reasonably priced, and should require payment up front or in short order to prevent squatters from taking a free ride. Name availability should be determined based on a publicly accessable database. That database should provide a standardized and documented answer to a query (no breaking scripts with dubious legal notices etc). One possability would be to have the primary server do it through DNS. An on-hold domain could either point to mars (or localhost) or just return a TXT record with contact info.

Netizens SHOULD do everything they can to keep law and government out of DNS. The last time the US government stepped into allocation, all but the corperates were pushed out of radio and television. The equipment is cheap, but getting a frequency allocation is a process only Douglas Adams could adequatly describe.

The issue of too many TLDs can be solved by reasonable entry requirements based on technical ability to reliably serve DNS for a TLD. Things like requiring multiple servers on different networks in seperate geographical areas to ensure that the service stays up. It may be advisable to require that a completely seperate entity must provide some of the secondary servers to protect against a business going under (or unfairly using the power inherent in serving a TLD). There should be demonstrable demand for the TLD. A TLD that has (and always will have) only a handful of secondaries should NOT be added to the root system. If anyone wants that, they should run an unofficial server and have those that want to see it configure appropriatly (it's easy in *nix, Win-ders will need to work on it).

With the above, ICANN (or is it ICANT), NSI, and anything the US government does with them will all be a moot point.

Re:Yeah, RIGHT. GREAT idea...

[rs79]

The Internet is not a public utility. It's
not a public network. If it was, it would
be subject to regulation by the International
Telecommunicatrions Union (ITU.INT).

Instead it's an enhanced data service. This
lets it go around the legal framework
surrounding internatinal networks.

In other words the net is a collection
of private networks. You own yours, I
own mine. Together we agree to use TCP/IP
to interoperate.

The "ruling class" of the Internet is the
collection of all people that own networks
and servers. Government, in any form doesn't
come into it in anyw ay shape or form.

You want to hand the net over to world
Governments like the UN or to ICANN's
"Government Advisory Committee" (the
aptly named "GAC"). Now, when the GAC
"advises" ICANN, how much weight do you
suppose ICANN will place on "advice" rendered
by the governments of the world compared
to us lowly users?

Re:Ira?

[rs79]

Yup, that's our Ira. About 2 years ago, he met will all the playwers it the new domain game. All of the. He wanted to meet them personally to feel them out.

His idea was to work a compromise so nobosy got what they wanted, but everybody could live with it. This was the "green paper" that said there'd be 5 new top level domains right away.

The trademark poeple and one hotshot in the EU (Christopher Wilkinson) made a huge deal out of this, and the successor to the green paper - the "white paper" took out those 5 new TLDs, gave us greater TM control and gave us the ICANN board.

I don't think Ira is too terrible. Now, Becky Burr at the Department of Commerce NTIA that is administering ICANN - there's a piece of work.

I was told the following story by an NSF staffer:

When the US Government Interagency Task Force was meeting to decide what to do about the domain issue, Commerce kept telling everybody they had all the answers, so, eveyrbody said "great, YOU handle it then" and are now laughing their asses off as Commerce mismanges this thing into the ground.

Remember, Commerce brought us OSI, too.