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

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.