In a move likely to provoke a typhoon of protest from both Internet activists and the government's National Science Foundation, the House has voted to spend the lion's share of a fund amassed to develop the Net's "intellectual infrastructure" and spend it on the Clinton administration's Next Generation Internet Initiative.
The Wednesday night vote would take US$23 million of the roughly $37 million in the fund. The money, in an account maintained by domain-name registrar Network Solutions Inc., represents 30 percent of the fees the company has collected for selling names over the past two years.
The Clinton administration plan would initially wire federal labs and universities to a network 1,000 times faster than today's Net.
The fund has attracted attention because of the inability of Network Solutions and the National Science Foundation to formulate a plan to disburse it. Since the company's exclusive contract to register names in the .com, .net, and .org domains runs out next year, the task of figuring out what to do with the money has taken on some urgency.
In a sense, the Wednesday vote realized the worst fears of those in the Internet community who have seen the fund as a potential benefactor for those with cutting-edge ideas on Net development and no resources to try them out. Over the summer, they expressed fears that Congress would take the money and spend it in areas where funding is scarce.
Some activists have called for a refund.
"This [30 percent] was a kind of tax, and if they are not going use it for its intended purpose, they should send it back, with interest," James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, said recently.
