So now Ford can go after ford.xxx, ford.store, ford.biz...
By Aaron Pressman
WASHINGTON - U.S. trade groups are urging lawmakers to keep control of the
Internet's address system within the country and block an international
proposal for
overseeing net addresses.
The groups, representing leading Internet and new media companies,
charged at a
hearing of the House Science Committee's basic research subcommittee
that the
international plan would give control of the Internet to
intergovernmental organizations
that could ignore U.S. laws and courts.
The international plan, created by a group called the International Ad
Hoc Committee
(IAHC), has already run into problems. The Clinton administration said
last week it had
concerns with the proposal and would issue its own plan within a month.
As far as using the IAHC as a starting point, their structure is
fundamentally
inappropriate," Andy Sernovitz, president of Association for
Interactive Media, said.
Problems with the current system mostly affect U.S. entities and should
be resolved
here, according to Barbara Dooley, executive director of the Commercial
Internet
Exchange, which represents Internet companies including AT&T, Sprint
and UUNet
Technologies.
The immediate problem is primarily a U.S.-focused and U.S. -centric
issue," Dooley
said after the hearing. We can't ignore the fact that in this
transition phase, the reality is
that we're dealing with an element in which that infrastructure was
paid for by U.S.
taxpayers."
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., signaled his
agreement that
jurisdiction over the Internet address system should remain in the
United States.
American taxpayers have helped build the Internet, as well as many U.S.
companies and
private-sector investors," Pickering said. This is something that is
uniquely American
that we have led and we need to maintain that leadership," Pickering said.
Under the current address system, each country has its own top-level
domain, the two or
three letter designation at the end of every e-mail or Wed site address.
But millions of sites, especially those run by major companies, use
so-called generic
domains, such as .com and .org, that are registered by solely Network
Solutions under a
contract with the National Science Foundation.
Desirable addresses in the generic domains are quickly running out and
legal disputes are
increasingly cropping up over the use of trademarks as address names.
The science
agency's contract with Network Solutions expires March 31, 1998,
although it could be
extended for up to six months.
The IAHC plan would create seven new generic domains and empower
competing firms
to register addresses. The new registration companies would be overseen
by a council of
registrars based in Switzerland and disputes over address names could
be resolved by
private arbitration administered by the World Intellectual Property
Organization.
--The eyes are the whores of the senses, they'll go to anything. Keith Richards
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>