internet governance

After more than six years of debate and negotiation, the group that manages the domain name system will finally launch its program Wednesday evening to dramatically expand the number of new names available on the Web, but it could take up to a year or longer before the new dot-something actually becomes available.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers formally opens up the application process Wednesday at 7:01 pm Eastern time (12:01 am GMT) for those seeking to operate a new top-level domain, the name to the far right of the dot. The application period will remain open until April 12. The process could result in the introduction of hundreds or even thousands of new names to compete with the 22 existing generic top-level domains such as .com, .net and .org.

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said Tuesday that the group still does not know how many applications it will get but has planned for about 500.

"Our goal is not to create any number of applications," Beckstrom said during a speech Tuesday in Washington. "Our goal is to serve the global public interest and to administer this program fairly and professionally for the benefit of global Internet users, while ensuring the security and stability of the global Internet."

Companies that want to try to operate their own domain name must first submit a lengthy application and a $185,000 fee. The evaluation process includes several stages beginning with a criminal background check of the proposed applicant's top officers and an examination of each applicant's business history.

ICANN also will examine whether the proposed domain name violates an existing trademark or sparks other concerns. If an application clears these hurdles, ICANN will then look at whether the group seeking to operate the domain name has the "technical, operational, and financial capability to operate a registry." ICANN has proposed a bidding process for those entities that are seeking the same name after initially urging the parties to try to resolve the dispute on their own.

The application process could take as little as nine months and up to two years, ICANN said. ICANN will release the list of applicants after the first round closes and allow for public comment on each proposed domain.

In the meantime, many companies and groups may try to keep their applications secret to keep others from seeking the same name while the application process remains open. Despite this, some companies already have announced plans to seek particular names such as the photography firm Canon, which said it would apply to operate .canon.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse estimates ICANN could get as many as 1,000 applications and that at least two-thirds of them will come from companies that are defensively registering names for strategic and competitive reasons, the group's president, Josh Bourne said.This is one the reasons why the group, along with many major companies and other trademark owners, have voiced concern about the expansion. Some critics want ICANN to delay the program's rollout and include additional protections for trademark owners.

ICANN has said it may make additional changes to the application guidelines but has not committed to any immediate major modifications. Still, Bourne said his group will continue to press forchanges including allowing trademark owners to pay a fee to the operator of each new domain name to block the registration of their trademarks by others in perpetuity.

Two senior lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee are urging the Commerce Department to try to delay the rollout of a program that could dramatically expand the number of Internet addresses.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the California nonprofit picked by the Commerce Department in 1998 to manage the Internet's domain name system, is set to begin accepting applications for the new domain name program Jan. 12 despite a growing chorus of protests against the proposal.

The latest criticism comes from Judiciary Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., a senior Judiciary member and the ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee. They joined other lawmakers in recent weeks who have raised concerns about the domain name plan and have called for a delay in its launch. Trademark holders, including many of the nation's biggest corporations, say the new program could cost them millions of dollars to register their brands in the new names -- or launch new domain names themselves.

"We urge the department to take steps necessary to delay the roll out of these new [domain names] until a more thorough analysis and evaluation of the potential costs and benefits of all these factors is concluded and until the department can assure Congress and the American public with absolute confidence that the benefits of the proposed rollout exceed the costs and risks to consumers, businesses and the Internet," Goodlatte and Berman wrote in a letter on Friday. They called on the department to answer several questions about the program's development and rollout by Jan. 5.

Their letter was sent the same day that the Federal Trade Commission formally outlined the agency's concerns with the new program. "We write now to highlight again the potential for significant consumer harm resulting from the unprecedented increase in new" domain names, all four FTC commissioners said in a letter Friday to ICANN.

The commissioners said a dramatic expansion of domain names will make the already challenging task of tracking down Internet scam artists even harder. They urged ICANN to limit the number of new domain names that can be introduced in the first round, increase numbers of staff charged with ensuring compliance with ICANN policies, and improve the accuracy of data about people who register addresses in the new domain names, which the commissioners noted has been problematic for many years.

So far, ICANN has given little indication that it is willing to delay the program's launch. During two congressional hearings in recent weeks and a statement in response to the FTC letter, ICANN continues to defend the program.

"The new program offers significant protections beyond those that exist in current [top-level domain names], including new mandatory intellectual property rights protection mechanisms and heightened measures to mitigate against malicious conduct," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said in a statement released Saturday.

After expressing concerns earlier this year, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which has some oversight over ICANN, has said it is satisfied with the protections ICANN has in place and pledged to closely monitor the program's rollout.

The agency, however, is in a difficult position. Some countries want the United Nation's International Telecommunication Union to take over ICANN's duties, a move the United States opposes. Given this, the United States has as a strong interest in ensuring ICANN succeeds, and thus does not want to be seen as imposing U.S. will on the nonprofit, which is supposed to operate based on input from Internet stakeholders around the world.

Former Federal Communications Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth is heading up a new think tank dedicated to free-market Internet policies.

The Center for Economics of the Internet was launched by the Hudson Institute Friday. As founder and director, Furchtgott-Roth will oversee production of analysis and research at the Center.

"Federal agencies are currently addressing policy decisions based on a theory of 'Internet exceptionalism,' where ordinary principles of economics do not apply," said Furchtgott-Roth, who served as a Republican member of the FCC from 1997 to 2001.
"Unfortunately, this arrangement only serves to harm consumers and weaken our businesses. The Center for Economics of the Internet will dispel the myth that regulating one part of the Internet ecosystem can be walled off from impacting other parts of the ecosystem."

Before heading to the FCC, Furchtgott-Roth helped oversee passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as chief economist for the House Commerce Committee. He has since worked as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and founder of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises.

Outgoing GOP commissioner Meredith Baker wasn't on hand Thursday as the Federal Communications Commission proposed new rules requiring Internet companies to report serious service outages.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Baker would not be considering agenda items after she announced Wednesday that she would be leaving to join NBCUniversal as a lobbyist.

Minus Baker, the commission voted to require Internet companies to abide by reporting rules that have been imposed on traditional phone companies.

For years the FCC has required phone companies to report when natural disasters or equipment failure shuts down phone service. But with more and more people relying on Internet connections for phone service, the FCC wants more information about serious outages.

"Broadband technologies delivering communication services are fast becoming substitutes for communications services provided by older, legacy communications technology," the FCC said in a statement.

Because broadband networks carry a substantial portion of 911 emergency call traffic, outage reporting is a public safety issue, said Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell.

"All Americans rightly expect their emergency calls to go through," he said.

In filings at the FCC, Internet providers argued that the reporting rules won't work for Internet services. Unlike traditional telephone networks, Internet services don't run through centralized points, making it difficult to tell where a problem originated.

"Given the significant differences between voice and broadband networks, the existing outage reporting model is a poor fit for broadband networks," Verizon argued.

The FCC also voted to give U.S. phone companies more flexibility in negotiating international agreements.

The Internet hit an important milestone Thursday. The group that manages the Internet's domain name system just handed out the last five blocks of addresses that use the original Internet protocol system known as IPv4.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number made clear that this news will not affect average Internet users. But it will require websites to eventually transition to the next generation Internet protocol known as IPv6.

At a news conference in Miami, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom described the event as "one of the most important days in the Internet's history. It marks far more than a transition from one Internet address protocol to another. It marks the successful growth of the Internet."

Still, Beckstrom and other officials stressed that Internet users should not notice any difference. "This event is insignificant" for Internet users, Internet Architecture Board Chairman Olaf Kolkman said. "Next week the Internet won't be significantly different than it was a week ago."

ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority allocated the last blocks, containing about 60 million IPv4 addresses, to the five Regional Internet Registries on Thursday.

When asked how long it will take each region to exhaust their final allocation of IPv4 addresses, Raúl Echeberría, chairman of the Number Resources Organization that represents the regional registries, said it will depend on each region but said he expects the Asia-Pacific region will run out first. An official with that organization added that the Asia-Pacific regional registry, like the others, has a plan in place to ration the remaining IPv4 addresses and expected it would take five to 10 years to completely exhaust them all.

There are about 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses in total, with most of those now in use, but the transition to IPv6 will provide a "billion-trillion times" more addresses, Beckstrom said. Kolkman added that IPv6 will help enable the rollout of new technologies and innovations that are not possible under the current IPv4-based Internet.

ICANN and the other officials from Internet-technical groups called on companies, organizations and governments to help bring attention to the need to transition to IPv6.

"The older generation will not go away. It still has a lot to contribute," Internet Society President and CEO Lynn St. Amour said. "But the sooner we all move to adopt IPv6, the better."

In the meantime, many companies, organizations and others who use the Internet will have to make technical modifications to accommodate both IPv4 and IPv6 and eventually will only be given IPv6 addresses.

While major Internet firms like Google and Facebook have adapted their systems for IPv6, the Internet Society has helped organize World IPv6 Day on June 8 "to motivate organizations" around the world to transition to IPv6, St. Amour said. As part of this effort, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai and others will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour "test drive," she added.

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., Wednesday re-introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on President Obama to oppose any efforts by the United Nations to take over governance of the Internet.

"It has become increasingly clear that international governmental organizations, such as the United Nations, have aspirations to become the epicenter of Internet governance. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this never happens," Bono Mack, the new chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, said in a statement.

She introduced a similar resolution in the last Congress. Bono Mack wrote House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., Wednesday to urge her to advance the measure.

The resolution notes that some countries that favor having the United Nations or another international entity play a bigger role in Internet governance "use the Internet as a tool of surveillance to curtail legitimate political discussion and dissent." Such countries want the United Nations or another international entity to "endorse national policies that block access to information, stifle political dissent, and maintain outmoded communications structures," according to the resolution.

The main group that currently has a formal governing role over the Internet is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California-based nonprofit that was picked by the U.S. government in 1998 to take over management of the Internet's domain name system.

In December, the United Nations hosted a meeting on ways to enhance "cooperation on international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet." At the meeting, ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom called for continuing support for ICANN and its process of working with Internet stakeholders, including the United Nations and national governments.

"The entire ecosystem collaborates: ICANN, Internet service providers, domain name businesses, [the Internet Society], [the Internet Engineering Task Force], governments, regional Internet registries, individual Internet users, non-profits and businesses around the world. And it works," Beckstrom said in his prepared remarks. "The multi-stakeholder model is not the problem. It's the solution."

Rep. Bobby Rush, who is vying to become ranking member on the House Energy and Commerc Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee, went off-script Thursday to assert that the Democratic FCC chairman's plan to ensure Internet freedom does not help low-income communities as much proponents claim.

The Illinois Democrat was addressing a forum sponsored by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies when he delved into the ongoing discussion on "net neutrality," or how to keep Internet providers from engaging in anticompetitive practices.

He concluded that while he supports proposals to ensure net neutrality, it has limited impact on poor and minority communities. The FCC is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a proposal by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that would give the regulatory agency the power to enforce certain rules barring broadband providers from blocking or slowing certain Web traffic. The proposal also includes language affecting pricing for broadband services that some consumer groups have criticized.

"Even though this issue has been framed in terms of broadband access for poor and minority people to attract people like me to their audience and to add potency to their arguments, the real battle has more to do with which giant can topple or get the best of the other," he told the audience. "It annoys me when people who purport to represent people of color start talking about low-income or poor people, as if they intimately know about their problems and challenges. Unlike those people, I do know and understand."

Rush said the maneuverings by large corporations and government regulators often obscure the impact of such policies on average Americans, and said the debate reminded him of old movies featuring battles between imaginary monsters.

"You know, when I was a child, I grew up watching a lot of old movies where you had these classic battles between King Kong and Godzilla," Rush said. "When King Kong and Godzilla were battling each other they could have cared less about the little guys who got caught in their path."

The congressman said regulators should focus more on increasing the number of minority-owned broadcasting and other media companies.

"In order to achieve the desired outcomes of inclusion, affordability, ubiquitous access to broadband services and more true universal service reform for the unserved and underserved in the most enduring fashion possible, the door to ownership has to swing open far more widely than where it's perched today," Rush said.

The group that manages the Internet's domain name system is meeting this week in Catagena, Colombia where its board is expected to take up a controversial proposal that could dramatically increase the number of generic Internet domain names available to users.

The Commerce Department has raised several concerns with the proposal, which would expand the number of generic top-level domains, such as .com and .info, from the current 21 to perhaps hundreds or more.

In a letter Thursday to ICANN, National Telecommunications and Information Administration Secretary Lawrence Strickling voiced concern that ICANN had yet complete a comprehensive study on the economic benefits to consumers of expanding the number of generical top-level domain names compared with the potential costs. He also questioned whether ICANN has met the goal it agreed to meet to provide a "thorough and reasoned explanation" of its decisions, particular when it comes to launching new domain names.

"While I am aware of the desire by some to move forward, the suggestion that the ICANN board could make an informed decision regarding the timing of the launch of the new gTLD program in Cartegena is unrealistic," Strickling wrote.

ICANN agreed to a set of performance goals, such as providing greater transparency and fact-based policy development, as part of an "affirmation of commitments" it struck with Commerce last year. ICANN was chosen in 1998 to take over the Internet's domain name system by the Commerce Department and still operates under the oversight of the U.S. government despite steps taken in recent years to loosen the United States' control over the nonprofit corporation.

From this week's magazine:

When a teenager named Alyson in Bloomington, Ill., posted a Twitter message earlier this week about her dog's penchant for Cheetos, she had no idea that her whereabouts were being broadcast globally on ICanStalkU.com. Using just the tweet, the site posted her full name and photo, highlighted her precise location on Google Maps, and linked to a picture of her toy poodle, Fendi, being offered one of the puffy, orange-colored snacks.

"This is absolutely shocking," said her mother, Gayl, whose name was easy to find on Alyson's account on MyLife.com, a website that helps people connect with friends and relatives. "I would never have thought that a Twitter message could circle somebody back to that amount of information and that amount of detail," added the mother, who asked that the family's surname not be published.

Fortunately, ICanStalkU.com is an educational tool designed to demonstrate how easily personal information can be compromised online. Some experts fear that as Americans increasingly gravitate to social media and Internet-enabled devices, laws to protect them are not keeping pace.

"We're moving to a society where all of our major transactions are going to occur online," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a watchdog group. "We need to create a set of safeguards, certainly around the most critical of those transactions."

With privacy breaches involving such Web giants as Facebook and Google regularly in the news, Congress and the Federal Trade Commission are poised to take action. But as consumer advocates make the case for stronger laws, powerful corporations and trade groups are trumpeting the virtues of self-policing.

Read the full story here (subscription required)

The FCC slammed the Phoenix Center on Wednesday for releasing a paper that claims the FCC's regulatory agenda will harm new job creation.

The commission's Paul deSa wrote a scathing blog post calling the Phoenix paper a "frothy mix of algebra and math jargon," that, he sarcastically notes, is anything but obvious to understand. DeSa is the chief of the Office of Strategic Planning.

The commission took on the report's primary assertion head on saying a better title would have been "23 pages of Theory Actually Says Nothing at All About the Practical Effect of FCC's Agenda on New Job Creation."

The Phoenix paper found that, over a five year period, various FCC proposals could result in the loss of 130,000 information-sector jobs and the loss in earnings of $36 billion due to a decline in investment. The Phoenix Center is a free-market think tank that focuses on telecommunications and technology, among other areas.

Adding insult to injury, deSa jested that it would be "fun to wander over to the Phoenix Center to sip lattes," while developing convoluted technological jargon, but the FCC "would rather do the hard work of implementing real-world policies that help incumbents and innovators create real jobs and investments."

DeSa faulted the think tank for overlooking actions the FCC has taken--unleashing new spectrum, and blessing the Verizon-Frontier merger, among others--that helped spur job creation.

"We appreciate the FCC's amazingly rapid analysis of a very complex econometric study that took us some months to complete," said George S. Ford, chief economist at the Phoenix Center. "While we certainly recognize and commend the FCC's efforts to promote [broadband] investments by proposing reforms such as lower rates for pole attachments...the hard reality is that the FCC has simultaneously proposed heavy-handed price regulation in its Open Internet Notice of Proposed Rulemaking." The result of such regulation on the Internet, Ford says, is disincentive for the private sector to invest and subsequently, job loss.

UPDATE: 4:38 pm

After reading the blog entry by deSa (Ford's comments were in response to statements deSa made Tuesday evening) The Phoenix Center responded again:

"While we always welcome the opportunity to sit down with our good friend Dr. de Sa to enjoy a beverage of his choice, we would like to make clear that our analysis was never meant to take away from the good work the FCC has done to develop and implement a truly excellent National Broadband Plan,"said Lawrence J. Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center.

"As we and others have pointed out, the FCC risks sabotaging its own efforts by trying to impose common carrier regulation on broadband transport,"Spiwak added. "Our paper simply provides an econometric multiplier to measure the effect of these proposed regulations on jobs, finds this effect to be significant, and will serve to undermine any good that they've done."