The current domain name registry monopoly operator, Network Solutions Inc has made its own pitch for longevity in the domain name registry market, which is shortly to be opened up to competition. It has produced a draft set of by-laws and articles of incorporation for the new entity that is supposed to take over control of the domain name system (DNS) come October 1, when the five-and-a-half year monopoly operated by NSI on behalf of the US government, comes to an end. Though in reality, nobody we speak to believes expects the entity to be up and running in time. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has also released its own draft by-laws and articles, which are on the second revision (07/24/98). The first draft was put forward by IANA supporters at the last meeting of the International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP) in Geneva at the end of last month as the basis for discussion there. Those present tell us that in each session somebody that supported the IANA and the position of the Council of Registrars and Policy Oversight Committee (both of which are supported by IANA), got up at the start, suggesting that the IANA draft should be the basis for any discussion – and almost every time they were overruled by those present. Last week IANA released a second draft that was supposed to incorporate the consensus views developed in Geneva. And that’s when many in the community had had enough. Not only did the draft not reflect the consensus, it was even further away than the first draft. According to NSI senior VP Don Telage, who was present at the first and second IFWP meetings, the second IANA draft actually ignored most of the consensus points. Jay Fenello, president of Iperdome Inc, a private registry and a member of the steering committee of the IFWP says that previously he was relatively comfortable with letting IANA director Jon Postel produce the drafts and then have the community discuss them, especially having met Postel in person in Geneva. But having seen the second draft he could no longer tolerate having IANA drafts as the basis of discussions. He says NSI has produced a relatively fair assessment of the consensus at the moment and he supports it as the draft du jour. IANA did not return our calls.
By Nick Patience
NSI was there in all the sessions and decided to produce its own draft document for discussion in the internet community, both in email discussion lists and at the next IFWP meeting, which is this week in Singapore (August 11-13). The main areas of difference between the IANA and NSI positions, according to NSI, are the membership of the non-profit entity; representation and separation of powers between the board of the entity and the technical councils that make recommendations to the board; the need for DNS constituencies to have a disproportionate number of seats on the board to begin with to deal with the DNS issues that will arise; and the fact that it should be a standards, not a regulatory body, as spelt out in the government white paper of June 5, upon which these drafts are based. NSI’s name for the hitherto unnamed entity is the Internet Standards Coordination Corporation. The question of membership – should the membership comprise individuals, companies or trade organizations or any combination of the three – has been possibly the most contentious issue all along and one on which the IANA draft was fairly clear. It said that the practical and logistical considerations impacted by such a decision are substantial, and seem unlikely to be resolved to a consensus in the time available to create the New IANA, and therefore the IANA draft felt it was a decision best left to the interim board of the new entity. The NSI draft says there should initially be two classes of membership: organization and individual members, which are mutually exclusive. It also suggests two other classes, registry organization and internet standards organization members. The question of organizations representing the interests of users having a say on the board is also a highly contentious one on which the IANA draft was fairly clear. It said that there was a nearly universal lack of enthusiasm with the concept of an industry/user supporting organization in the earlier draft. The articles went on to say that it was hard to see how a user- representative organization could be created, and anyway, the structure of any such organization could not ensure that the person chosen for the board would be experienced enough to make a particularly valuable contribution to the very difficult work of the Initial Board. True or not, it was politically inadvisable thing to say. And while the NSI draft does not address user organizations in particular, it galvanized opinion among some previous supporters of the IANA position that it was no longer the way forward. These comments from IANA caused NSI to jump into the fray last week. NSI’s Telage, who was instrumental in getting the draft written over a couple of days, says the starting point was the consensus document drawn up by academics at Harvard University (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ifwp/consensuslist.asp) as that seemed like the best summary of what has been happening at the IFWP meetings thus far. He says he wanted to make sure that the hard-fought consensus hammered out at the meetings. The intention is that if this NSI draft looks acceptable to the community – a moot point, granted – that the Harvard legal team, which includes professor Larry Lessig of Microsoft Corp/Department of Justice antitrust case fame, should take over the drafting of future documents, which should form the basis for discussion at the IFWP meetings. Telage says professor Tamar Frankel, who chairs the IFWP meetings has seen the NSI draft and is pleased with it. In terms of commenting on the draft, Telage recommends contributing to the IFWP mailing list and others as a team at NSI are monitoring them and will pull together all the comments for review. Telage, like most in the industry believes that nothing will happen before NSI’s contract is up on September 30. But pointing out that many registries act on a voluntary basis, without a contract he says October 1 will be a day like every other day. That the DNS continues without a hiccup during the transition to competition is in every internet user’s interest – most of all NSI’s.
