The National Science Foundation (NSF) appears to be planning to lodge an appeal against the ruling on April 13 that declared the so-called intellectual infrastructure fund’ it amassed from the proceeds of domain name registration to be an illegal tax. But the situation is still unclear, and even the NSF does not appear to be sure what its options are at the moment. Reuters put out a story yesterday that an NSF official told the House Science Committee’s basic research sub-committee on Wednesday that an appeal was going to be lodged. But when we called over, the NSF told us no decision had been made and the official had been told to qualify the remark during the hearing. That NSF has the right to ask for an appeal is not in question, but the federal agency said the case did not include a resolution telling it what its options are, and so at the moment it is not sure what date it has to appeal by, or whether or not there is even a deadline. The NSF has raised about $50m from September 1995, when domain name registration fees were introduced, to March 31 this year, when the contract with Network Solutions Inc to look after the registration process ended. The contract is currently in a six month transition period, but the $30 that went into the fund is no longer collected, cutting NSI’s fee to $70 for two years’ registration. The case was brought by Washington DC lawyer William Bode, on behalf of a few users of the internet. Judge Thomas Hogan could rule that the money should be refunded, which would mean every person and company who has registered a domain name in the .com, .net or .org spaces getting their registration fees back. Bode said at the time of the ruling that he did not expect an appeal from the NSF, but that’s what he would be expected to say. He was not available for comment yesterday.
