Sorting out the domain name system.
The Internet's domain name system (DNS) is bursting at the seams, and if the problem isn't fixed soon, governments may assert control over a fundamental aspect of Internet architecture. The Net's "positive anarchy" has become an international liability, and nation-states around the world are salivating at the prospect of stepping in to end the chaos.
The current crisis can be traced back to the early 1980s, when DNS was developed to help Internet users find one another by mapping prosaic names to numerical addresses - the Internet Protocol assignments given to each network host. Thus, for example, the domain name whitehouse.gov points to the IP address 198.137.240.91. And just as whitehouse is a domain - a second-level domain, actually - so too is the .gov attached to it. In fact, seven such "generic" top-level domains (gTLDs) were created in all, including .com, .org, .edu, .mil, and so forth. The original assumption was that seven gTLDs would operate in perpetuity, without the need to create any more.
Few people then expected the Internet to grow into a mass medium. But today, .com has become the most popular home for the world's online commercial endeavors, leaving fewer and fewer choices that reflect company trademarks. As the number of available names has diminished, lawyers and con artists have used trademark-infringement lawsuits and extortion attempts to exploit the scarcity. Meanwhile, Network Solutions Inc. - the for-profit company that has maintained the gTLD registry since 1995 - has been reaping fat rewards from its DNS monopoly.
Internet gurus have called for the creation of new gTLDs to alleviate the congestion, but DNS is managed by a labyrinth of committees and working groups. Irresolute and lacking a clear chain of command, this system has allowed fringe elements to fill the vacuum, creating unsanctioned, "rogue" DNS registries and gTLDs (such as .corp, .club, and .sex) to challenge Network Solutions and its various paper-tiger oversight organizations.
Faced with the prospect of a DNS free-for-all, a closed door group of élite Net policymakers convened in late 1996 and early '97 under the name International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) to sort through the muck and recommend future DNS structures.
The IAHC recommended the creation of seven new gTLDs to be split between 28 new registries. Trouble is, some of the proposed gTLDs will only redouble the trademark woes of existing .com occupants by forcing them to also set up shop on .firm and .store. Such implications prompted the International Trademark Association to issue a follow-up report which anxiously noted that "the world is shrinking!"
Sorting out the DNS mess is no easy task. Trademark law, long bound by notions of physical space and dissociated markets, is careening ass-first into cyberspace, which erases both. David Johnson and David Post, coauthors of the seminal paper "Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace," write that domain names generate "a new type of property akin to trademark rights, but which is not inherently tied to the trademark law of any given country."
This uncertainty - coupled with the indecision and clumsiness of the Internet architecture community - is making governments nervous, and some have started dropping hints that it might be time to take over the entire DNS process.
A report leaked to CommunicationsWeek International from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development stated that "the role of governments is to ensure that the administration and operation of the DNS is stable and that competition occurs in a fair and open manner." As we go to press, 80 delegates are preparing to attend the OECD's first intergovernmental meeting to discuss DNS alternatives.
Here in the US, federal agencies are keeping close tabs on the DNS controversy. The US Patent and Trademark Office, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and Ira Magaziner's e-commerce policy group have all expressed concern over the problem, and these agencies are now collaborating with a newly formed Federal Interagency Working Group on Domain Names to make sure the system is under control. Privately, US officials say the IAHC's proposal to create 28 new gTLD registries is a step in the right direction, but they insist that the overall framework for managing DNS should be subject to federal supervision.
If the DNS discord continues, the stage could be set for a reprise of the spectrum wars of the 1920s and '30s - a process that ultimately gave the FCC authority to license the ether as a "public resource" and regulate content transmitted over public airwaves. If the Internet community can't sort out the DNS problem on its own - quickly - then we may be handing governments a convenient invitation to sort out the mess ... once and for all.
