Chapter 6: Appropriating the Root: Property Rights Conflicts | Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace

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Nysernet formed PSINet, other regionals formed Cerfnet, and UUNet. Later, these three joined with Sprint to form the Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) in 1991.
Email, Steve Wolff, director, NSF CISE, to Eric Aupperle, president, Merit Network, May 24, 1991, <http://www.merit.edu/merit/archive/nsfnet/nsf.agreements/commercial.traffic>.
Project Solicitation 93-52, Network Access Point Manager, Routing Arbiter, Regional Network Providers, and Very High Speed Backbone Network Services Provider for NSFNET and the NREN Program.
NSF also supported a 'routing arbiter' to provide a database and other information needed by the NAPs to exchange traffic in an orderly fashion, as well as some transitional funding for the regional networks.
Mosaic was the outgrowth of a program written by the Software Development Group at the NCSA called Collage, designed to enable researchers to collaborate over networks. As the project neared completion, programmers at the group got wind of the World Wide Web project and quickly realized that Web compatibility could turn the Collage project into something much broader than a collaboration tool. See <http://www.webhistory.org/historyday/abstracts.html>.
NSFNET backbone statistics are archived at the Georgia Tech Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/stats/NSF/merit.html >.
Minutes, October 13, 1994, IAB Meeting, <ftp://ftp.iab.org/in-notes/IAB/IABmins/IABmins.941013 >.
'It is clear from the materials presented by NSI that a primary culprit in the RS work load is the .COM domain. . . . At present, the management of .COM is paid for by the NSF, and hence increasing demand for .COM registrations will require increasing support from the NSF. The panel recommends that NSI begin charging for .COM domain name registrations, and later charge for name registrations in all domains.' InterNIC Midterm Evaluation and Recommendations: A Panel Report to the National Science Foundation, December 1994, <http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/legal/internic/midterm/index.html>.
<http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/legal/internic/cooperative-agreement/ amendment4.html>.
Global Domain Names Status Report, NetNames, London, March 1997.
Email, August 17, 1998, from former NSI employee to newslist.
In July 1993, Brian Reid, who at the time worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, received an email from InterNIC stating, 'We try to register only one name per 'organization.' DEC.COM has been around since day-one. Do you intend to replace DEC.COM with DIGITAL.COM?' <domreg@internic.net> to Brian Reid, July 16, 1993; on file with author.
According to Kim Hubbard, former director of ARIN, an early employee of Network Solutions, and a worker at the InterNIC from 1991 to 1996, it was Jon Postel who decided that it was a 'waste of time' to attempt to segregate .com, .net, and .org registrations.
Network Solutions did not threaten to deactivate domain names for nonpayment of the fees until June 1996. A copy of a June 17 news release is archived at <http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/1996q2/0295.html>.
The French ccTLD, for example, in 1996 required users to fit into one of eight categories: .asso, .barreau, .cci, .cesi, .dxxx, .gouv, .presse, and .tm.
Internet Domain Survey, July 1995, <http://www.isc.org/ds/WWW-9507/ distbynum.html>.
For U.K. statistics, see <http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/stats/stats.1996.html html>; for U.S. statistics see <http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/legal/internic/coop-stats/ >.
Panavision International v. Toeppen, 46 U.S.P.Q.2d 1511, 1998 WL 178553 (9th Cir. April 17, 1998); Intermatic Inc. v. Toeppen, 947 F. Supp. 1227 (N.D.Ill. 1996).
Marks & Spencer PLC, British Telecommunications PLC, Virgin Enterprises, Ltd., J. Sainsbury PLC, Ladbroke Group PLC v. One in a Million, et al., Judgment (On Appeal in the High Court of Justice, Supreme Court of Judicature Chani, 98/ 0025/B-July 23, 1998); British Telecommunications Ltd. and Others v. One in a Million, Ltd. (1999), FSR 1 (C.A.).
As of mid-2000, Yahoo! was a complainant in four UDRP cases involving 99 domain names; AOL was a complainant in nine UDRP cases involving 34 domain names.
'Online Legal Issues,' New York Law Journal, February 15, 1995.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, CA No. 99-1336-A, E.D. Va., June 12, 2000.
Planned Parenthood Fed'n of America, Inc. v. Bucci, 42 U.S.P.Q.2d 1430, 1432 (S.D.N.Y. 1997).
Chet Flippo, 'Country Artists Sue ‘Cybersquatter.'' Billboard, April 25, 1998, p. 82.
Amended Complaint, KnowledgeNet, Inc. v. D.L. Boone & Co., Network Solutions, Inc., and Digital Express Group, Inc., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, No. 94-C-7195.
In the first six weeks after adoption of the new policy, the rate of domain name registration fell from about 20,000 per month to 6,000 per month. But the effect was temporary, and growth in the number of registrations resumed at the previous rate shortly thereafter. Investor's Business Daily, October 17, 1995, p. A10.
Because of public pressure, Prema backed down from its claim.
Roadrunner Computer Systems v. Network Solutions, Inc, Civil Action No. 96-413 (E.D. Va., March 26, 1996); Giacalone v. Network Solutions, Inc., Case No. 96-20434 (N.D. California, June 14, 1996); Network Solutions, Inc. v. Clue Computing, Case No. 96-CV-694 (D. Colorado June 21, 1996).
Lockheed Martin Corp. v. NSI, 43 U.S.P.Q.2d 1056, 1997 U.S. Dist. Lexis 10314, 1997 WL 381967 (C.D. Cal. 1997).
Oggi Advertising Ltd. v. McKenzie and others, CP.147/98 (High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry), June 2, 1998. See also Domainz Media Statement, November 13, 1998, <http://www.domainz.net.nz/newsstand/stories/court4.html>.
An English company from Manchester, Fast-net Developments Ltd., applied to IANA for the top-level domain for Libya, .ly. Fast-net Development's owner, Kalil Elwiheishi, was listed as the administrative contact for the .ly domain with an address in Tripoli, which appears to fulfill IANA's residency requirement. The owner's real residence was England, but IANA lacked the capacity to monitor such things. A British company, NetNames, acted as collector of registration fees for .ly, which it split with the administrative contact. Such arrangements were not at all uncommon with other developing country ccTLDs.
The small nation of Niue (.nu), for example, allows its ccTLD to be administered and marketed by a 'nonprofit' foundation. Both .nu and the ccTLD for the Cocos and Keeling islands (.cc) are marketed commercially and globally as an alternative to generic TLDs. In a few cases, a happy coincidence allows the ccTLD to function as a kind of generic TLD. The ISO code for Tuvalu, for example, is .tv; for Moldova, the code is .md. .tv was subdelegated to Idealab, Inc. and marketed commercially.
For an account of the Haiti (.ht) delegation crisis, see John S. Quarterman, Matrix News 7 (December 1997).
It was not unusual to see on various email lists disapproval of the idea that 'everyone wants their own domain' and the opinion that DNS was 'never designed' to provide that. See, for example, Joe Provo: 'The problem is-and always has been-inappropriate registering. The 'joes-bar-and-grill.com'-style registering is wildly inappropriate and was (mostly) avoided by ordinary pressures until the ‘anything for a buck' providers entered the game.' Email to newdom list, October 25, 1995, <http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/>.
See IAB minutes, August 1995, <ftp://ftp.iab.org/in-notes/IAB/IABmins/IABmins.950808 >.
'No one has really objected to paying reasonable fees for registration. EVERYONE (almost) has objected to paying fees set arbitrarily by a group which contains and considers little or no input from the community in the process and is not restricted to any public comment period or public regulation regarding future fee levels.' Owen DeLong, email to newdom list, September 20, 1995, <http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/1995q3/0323.html >. However, the Internet Architecture Board minutes for October 13, 1994, note, 'There was an NSF-sponsored meeting on this issue [charging], which concluded that a charging model should be developed for registration services (on a yearly maintenance basis).
Email, Postel to isoc-trustees@linus.isoc.org, September 15, 1995, <http:// www.wia.org/pub/postel-iana-draft13.htm>.
'So I would suggest we proceed on two fronts in parallel: (1) to look at ways a single TLD could be shared between two or more registries without a single central mechanism, and (2) to look at the procedures we would set up to establish new registries and new TLDs without such sharing. If we find a good way to support the sharing we will update the procedures to include it.' Email, Postel to newdom, October 19, 1995, <http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/1995q4/0009.html>.
An IETF Working Group on shared TLDs was formed and met at the Dallas meeting in December 1995, producing a draft.
Draft-postel is unfortunately vague about how it would handle conflicting applications for the same character strings; rather than specifying an auction procedure it implies that IANA would use its own discretion (Postel 1996, 19).
The $10,000 fee varied across different drafts, starting at $100,000 and going down to $2,000 in one iteration.
The significance of this exchange is disputed. Ambler maintains that Manning watched him write the check and understood that it and the accompanying paperwork constituted a formal application for permission from IANA to run an experimental registry. Postel and Manning strongly disputed this statement, contending that the envelope was presented to Manning in a manila folder along with other papers from Ambler and that he did not discover it until after Ambler left the meeting.
The fact that the envelope was unopened tends to support Ambler's version of the story-how could the IANA staff have known that it contained money if they never opened it?
From Thom Stark, 'The New Domain Name Game,' 1997, <http://www. starkrealities.com/iahc.html>.
IAB minutes, October 1994, <ftp://ftp.iab.org/in-notes/IAB/IABmins/IABmins.941013>.
Interview with Scott Bradner, July 19, 2000. Bradner blames Rutkowski for many of the tensions, claiming that he acted as if the IETF was a 'wholly owned subsidiary of the Internet Society' during his tenure as director.
IAB minutes, December 1994, <ftp://ftp.iab.org/in-notes/IAB/IABmins/IABmins.941209 >.
IAB minutes, January 1995.
L. Landweber, B. Carpenter, J. Postel, and N. Trio, 'Proposal for an ISOC Role in DNS Name Space Management,' November 1995, <http://www.iiia.org/lists/newdom/1995q4/0154.html>.
Email, Aiken to ISOC Board, March 17, 1995, <http://www.wia.org/pub/ postel-iana-draft5.htm>.
Email, Cerf to Aiken, March 18, 1995, <http://www.wia.org/pub/postelianadraft9.htm>.
National Science Foundation and Harvard Information Infrastructure Project, 'Internet Names, Numbers, and Beyond: Issues in the Coordination, Privatization, and Internationalization of the Internet,' November 20, 1995, <http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/iip/GIIconf/nsfmin1.html>.
M. St. Johns, 'FNC's Role in the DNS Issue,' Internet Numbering Issues, Kennedy School at Annenberg Program Offices, Washington, D.C., November 20, 1995.
Minutes of the NSF/Harvard conference, <http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/iip/GIIconf/nsfmin1.html >.
G. Lawton, 'New Top-Level Domains Promise Descriptive Names,' Sun-World Online, September 1996.
IANA's critics charged that it had moved forward with implementation of draft-postel without obtaining IETF approval of it as an RFC and also that it proposed to create an ad hoc working group appointed by Postel rather than an open, IETF working group.
Karl Denninger, newdom post, October 28, 1996.
Email, Vixie to newdom, October 28, 1996.
'The FNCAC reiterates and underscores the urgency of transferring responsibility for supporting U.S. commercial interests in iTLD administration from the NSF to an appropriate agency.' Draft Minutes of the Federal Networking Council Advisory Committee Meeting, October 1996, <http://www.itrd.gov/fnc/FNCAC_10_96_minutes.html >. According to Mike Roberts of Educom, 'The motion we passed expressed the strong desire that the FNC work hard NOW to develop a sound future foundation for the domain name system when the NSI agreement ends in less than 18 months, and further, that an ‘appropriate entity' be identified to hold responsibility for those parts of the DNS that are found to require permanent stewardship, i.e., not to be handed over for dissection by the greedy private sector types that lust after the alleged NSI monopoly profits.' Mike Roberts to IETF list, November 10, 1996.

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