The comments are in - more than 650 of them in a stack 18 inches high - about the Clinton administration's plan to reform the Internet's domain name system.
The tenor of response to date is largely predictable: Industry insiders -- long-established business powerhouses and those who have been involved in running the current US-based system -- generally like the administration proposal. Technical outsiders -- including some people intimately involved with developing the Net's current address structure and those who have been pressing alternatives to the current registration system -- dislike the plan.
The green paper calls for replacing the current Network Solutions Inc. monopoly on domain-name administration with a nonprofit agency based in the United States and proposes to open the name registration business to competition. It was developed by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Clinton Net czar Ira Magaziner. The plan was released in January and followed by a nearly two-month public comment period.
Leading the opposition is the Geneva-based Council of Registrars, an international group whose founders are mainly old-school technicians who have been handling domain-name and Internet addressing issues since day one. The council recently gave its verdict on the plan: It's rotten.
"The plan perpetuates a monopoly, ignores the International nature of the Internet and delays the natural evolution that is well under way," council chairman Alan Hanson said in a 23 March response.
Some aspects of that opinion were echoed by the Australian government, whose technology minister urged the nation's National Office for the Information Economy to issue a formal response to the US government draft.
In his 10 March press release, Australian Senator Richard Alston said the draft is too US-centric and ignores existing international efforts.
Similar concerns were voiced by the European Union and some multinational corporations.
In a letter sent to the Department of Commerce dated 23 March, counsel for America Online - the world's largest Internet service provider - wrote, "AOL does not believe that the US proposal adequately reflects the legitimate need and desire for the larger international community, including stakeholders in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to be directly involved in decisions regarding the future administration of the DNS [domain name system] and management of the coordinated functions of the Internet."
Other comments run the gamut from not enough protection for trademarks to a need for a top-level .moon domain for the Moon, but the concern about the paper's US-centric attitude has been most loudly voiced.
"We have always said, and we think it's really critically important, that whatever corporation comes into place to take over this is representative of the geographical and functional diversity of the Internet," said Becky Burr, associate administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "That is an enormously important thing for us, and we intend to do that."
And now, with all of the comments on the table, the government is busy with the next step in this process - moving the draft of 30 January from discussion status into official government policy. But just when this will happen is anybody's guess.
"It's really too soon to tell - we've got to read all of these documents and wade through them," said Burr. "We're really working very, very hard to get this out quickly and do something in April. But we don't have a fixed date."
The US government contract with Network Solutions Inc. expires on 30 September.
"We're hoping that there will be a new, not-for-profit private-sector corporation that is there, in place and ready to go, by 30 September," Burr said.
Comments received to date have been posted online, and email opinions are still being accepted.
