Networker: Keeping control

Most internet business are facing financial crises today, a year
after the “dotcom” bubble burst. Even the infrastructure companies, those
that manufacture the boxes and phone lines, software and PCs that connect
people to the internet, are in trouble. For the moment the internet profiteers
are licking their wounds.

However, there is one internet business that is doing well, and that
is the domain name business. A domain name, such as business.com or cocacola.com,
costs virtually nothing to produce. So any company that makes money from
selling domain names, or maintaining the central domain name register,
in effect has a license to print money.

The major player in the field is VeriSign, a company that until a couple
of years ago had a monopoly on the business. VeriSign maintains the central
registry of .com, .net, and .org names (and collects US$6 a year for every
single name with one of these three extensions). Under a recently signed
agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN, it will retain this control until 2007.

VeriSign is also a retail name seller. This arrangement allows it to
take considerable financial advantage from its position (such as holding
on to commercially valuable names whose owners fail to renew them, and
then selling them at well above the official price).

VeriSign originally gained this exclusive position through intriguing
contacts with seedier parts of the US government. Potential competitors
unhappy not to be sharing in the loot are complaining, demanding some of
the action. They are now taking up the battle in the US government and
courts.

How does it happen that an open and “ungoverned” network such as the
internet finds its affairs fought out in the state structures of one country?
This is because changes to the internet's core architecture, including
the top-level domains (tlds), can only be done with the approval of the
US Department of Commerce. These tlds include .com, .net, and country extensions
such as .uk or .au (Australia).

The form that the Department of Commerce's control takes is the power
to approve or reject key decisions by ICANN. In particular there the recent
ICANN decision to create some additional tlds, but not others, has favoured
particular sections of internet business.

With the growth of the internet, ICANN has become tangled in controversy,
focussing on its composition and activities. While business interests battle
for opportunity, tens of thousands of “at-large members” are trying to
protect the open character of the internet. ICANN's membership is based
primarily on business interest group representation, with a few members
elected directly by this at-large membership.

The at-large representatives have played an important part in focussing
on ICANN's less democratic activities. For this reason there is currently
a campaign by sections of the internet industry to abolish these positions.

Far from being a stateless haven, the heart of the internet is increasingly
embroiled in battles for political control.

BY GREG HARRIS (gregharris_greenleft@hotmail.com)

From GLW issue 449