REVOBILD -- REVOPRESS

   downloaded (Dec'97) from:  www.freedomforum.org
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               THE INTERNET: PRIVATIZATION OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
 
                       (AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT)
                               By Chris Flash
 
 
   The internet naming system, known as the "domain name system,"
   operated by the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) under
   the guardianship of the National Science Foundation (NSF), a
   government organization funded with tax dollars, has been privatized.
   InterNIC, the name registry part of the internet, is now run by
   Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI), which now enjoys a highly profitable
   monopoly.
 
   InterNIC, administered by NSF, began name service on the internet for
   free. In 1993, InterNIC was privatized with a contract between NSF and
   NSI, awarding the domain registration service of the internet to NSI.
   In March of 1995, NSI was bought by the Scientific Applications
   International Corporation (SAIC). In September 1995, NSI began
   charging a $100 fee for name registration. Thus, InterNIC was
   transfered from the public sector (NSF) to the private sector (SAIC),
   with no public hearings or a competitive bidding process. SAIC, a
   multi-billion dollar company, has strong ties to the Pentagon, Central
   Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). SAIC is
   a 20,000 employee-owned company with about 450 offices around the
   globe. Its current board of directors includes former NSA chief Bobby
   Inman, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, and the former head of
   research and development for the Pentagon, Donald Hicks. Ex-CIA
   director Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense William Perry and CIA
   Director John Deutsch have been past SAIC board members. Eighty three
   percent of SAIC's $2 billion annual revenue comes from government
   contracts, including defense, intelligence, and law enforcement
   contracts. SAIC is designing new information systems for the Pentagon,
   helping to automate the FBI's computerized fingerprint identification
   system, and last year won a $200 million contract to provide
   "information support" to the IRS.
 
   SAIC also has the public data base listing of internet registration
   names. Since the SAIC take over of NSI, internet name registrations
   have been delayed due to investigations of those registering.
 
   When NSI began charging for the once free name registrations, the
   internet was on its way to the transition to a commercial marketplace.
   The regis-tration fee of $100 for the first two years of service has
   richly lined NSI's coffers as the number of registrations reached
   around 50,000 per month during 1996 alone. During this interval, the
   limitations of the current naming para-digm became obvious as
   companies discovered that they had to race, or in some cases litigate,
   to secure their internet identities ("their name".com) --only to
   discover that those names had already been assigned.
 
   Part of the problem lies not just in human greed, but in the limited
   number of the so-called "top level domains" administered by InterNIC.
   They are ".com" ".edu" ".org" ".net" ".mil" and ".gov." This system,
   which has its roots in the Department of Defense, was designed to
   identify the purpose of computers on the internet. The ".com" domain
   was the division given to commercial network addresses, who, at the
   time the system was established, were a minority of networks on the
   internet. Now that the number of commercial networks has grown beyond
   any scale ever imagined by the architects of the internet, the ".com"
   domain has just about reached its limits.
 
   Users have been frustrated by the limitations, speculation, and
   bureaucracy associated with registering an address on the internet
   with the InterNIC/ NSI/SAIC monopoly. Since ".com" is a limited realm,
   corporations soon began fighting over domain name space. Their
   increased pressure on the committee that assigns unique parameters on
   the internet, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to
   expand name space, has pushed IANA to form an ad-hoc committee to
   decide how to deal with the domain name "shortages."
 
   Though IANA has no authority to do so, IANA is now proposing
   applications under which corporations may compete with InterNIC domain
   space. In late 1996, IANA joined forces with the World Intellectual
   Property Organization (WIPO), the International Telecommunications
   Union (ITU), the Internet Society (ISOC), the Internet Architecture
   Board (IAB), the Federal Networking Council (FNC), the International
   Trademark Association (ITA) and the Internet Engineering Task Force
   (IETF), to form the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC).
 
   After their conference in San Jose, California in December, IAHC put
   forth a controversial plan to license would-be registries who wish to
   compete in the market for domain name service: a $20,000
   non-refundable application fee, a percentage of the companies'
   revenues, and a requirement that potential registries submit to full
   examination of their books by an "independent" auditor.
 
   IAHC claims that these funds will be spent on maintaining the root
   servers (the computers which hold the internet's central name
   database.) The computers holding the domain name database are
   currently run by an inner circle, most of whom are members of IANA.
   Two examples are the root server at the University of Southern
   California (USC) run by John Postel, the head of IANA, and the root
   server residing at the army base at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds (the
   source of complaints by female recruits of sexual abuse by drill
   instructors.)
 
   IAHC's plan, which has no legal authority or congressional mandate,
   seeks to impose regulations on a deregulated market, subsidizing
   corporations and collecting double taxes on American and international
   companies. More than half of the existing root nameserver computers
   are already supported by US tax dollars, not to mention the for profit
   companies who run the other computers serving the balance of root
   servers.
 
   In essence, the feds are allowed to have a database and then have the
   audacity to charge the public for the priviledge under the pretext of
   free enterprise.
 
   Enter the free market. In response to the command economy of
   artificial shortages that have been imposed by a militaristic
   bureaucracy, a few enterprising independents have created new networks
   of root servers outside the "sanctioned" servers on which all
   connections to the internet depend. One such independent server is
   "name.space."

   Name.space, Inc. is creating unlimited names on demand for its users.
   You can create just about any domain name you want for yourself in
   name. space: "shadow.press," "fuck.you," or "anything.anything."
 
   Commercial registrations in name. space are currently free, but will
   be eventually charged at $25 per year per name once name.space names
   are resolvable on the entire internet, which will happen in a few
   months. By comparison, InterNIC/NSI charges $100 for the first two
   years with a $50 annual renewal charge.
 
   Name.space also gives users the option of protecting their individual
   privacy with unpublished listings. InterNIC/NSI forces mandatory
   publication in their publicly-available "whois" database, and your
   personal information is in the hands of SAIC and various intelligence
   agencies. You can register your name with Name.Space in the
   "free.zone" accessible through the name.space web site at:
   http://namespace.autono.net. Importantly, instructions on how to
   change your computer settings to allow you access and recognition
   throughout the internet will appear on your screen.
 
   Currently, if you go with an independent root server and your name
   does not appear in the sanctioned database of InterNIC's established
   root servers, your name will not be found everywhere on the internet.
   Only other computers who check the new expanded database will be able
   to resolve the new domain names created by the independents. There are
   already more than 250 new possible names under which one can register
   on these new services.
 
   This poses a problem for the independent upstart name registries
   because, although they may have a fully functional root server system
   in place, and a fully automated and operational registration service
   in place, they are essentially frozen out of service. The defacto root
   servers, controlled by members of IANA, decide which entries will be
   in the database of the sanctioned root servers.
   Hence, IAHC has a vested interest in protecting their control
   over the "who's who" list of in-ternet networks, as do their
   compatriots at NSI, SAIC and the government agencies who do business
   with them.
 
   Paul Garrin, founder of name.space explains: "The problem with the
   current models is the question of ownership of the new top level
   names. In fact, the common words used as descriptive top level names
   should be seen as a public resource, and the registries hold a
   stewardship on the name in the public's interest. Multiple registries
   must then share a database, and can assign names under the same top
   levels and insure uniqueness of names by cross-checking of their
   databases. Name.space is developing the software to do this. The
   doomed model of creating islands of privately-owned words is one of
   the final assaults on what is left of the public domain. "Trademark
   holders of certain words only own such words in their descriptive
   contexts, as in `Apple Computer'. Apple doesn't own the word `apple,'
   it owns the only `Apple Computer.' Otherwise, every time one would use
   the word `apple' in print or otherwise, they could face potential
   trademark infringement. This is to the point of absurdity. The issue
   of intellectual property is pushing the envelope of what I call the
   privatization of the public domain. When factual data or statistics
   become the property of some media conglomerate who invested money to
   package the information, does this lead to the total commodification
   of knowledge? When the facts in an encyclopaedia become the property
   of Time Warner, do we win or do we lose? When does culture and history
   become private property? And when this happens, when our society
   rea-ches the total control over information by the informations
   corporations, will they take our language, too?"
 
   In name.space, the public can suggest a new rootname, which is created
   for free and made available publicly for anyone to register under.
 
   This is a collaborative process, and its popularity is proven by the
   fact that public requests outnumber the amount of private requests
   by 20 to 1. That seems to say something about the preferences of the
   users, and their acceptance of the words as a public resource.

   To Garrin, this is more than just about business. He says,
   "Name.space is delivering the net back to the users, and creating an
   economy of scale where registries, providers and users can benefit
   from low cost and value-added services on their networks." He adds,
   "We're shifting the naming paradigm from militarism to democracy,
   and fulfilling the ideal nature of the internet, which is a virtual
   space with no borders."


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      Visit the name.space website at http://namespace.autono.net
 
 
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