Philadelphia Inquirer They'll be registering .org names in Horsham

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Steve Bradt <bradt () pobox upenn edu>
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Reply-To: bradt () pobox upenn edu
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 09:31:01 -0400
To: "Farber, David" <farber () cis upenn edu>
Cc: "Ozio, Ron" <ozio () pobox upenn edu>, "Rathman, Sandy"
<rathman () seas upenn edu>
Subject: Philadelphia Inquirer

Dave -- You are quoted in today's Philadelphia Inquirer regarding the
registration of .org Internet domains. URL is below.  Steve

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/4309957.htm

They'll be registering .org names in Horsham
By Porus P. Cooper
Inquirer Staff Writer


On Jan. 1, some traffic in the virtual world will be directed to a local way
station: Horsham.

On that day, Afilias Ltd., an Irish company whose U.S. offices are in
Horsham, will begin to maintain the Internet registry of domain names that
end in .org.

Domain names are akin to telephone numbers. They are unique worldwide
identifiers of the people or entities that possess them. In fact, each
domain name really masks a unique and long combination of numbers that would
be impossible to remember let alone associate with specific individuals or
groups such as the Red Cross.

The .org database contains 2.3 million names, making it the fifth-largest
after the better-known .com and .net, and the less-familiar but prolific
country codes for Germany and the United Kingdom, .de and .uk.

This week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or
ICANN, the agency charged with allocating registries, announced that it was
taking .org away from VeriSign, of Mountain View, Calif., the company that
also operates .com and .net, and reassigning it to a nonprofit group called
the Internet Society.

The agency, which is based in Marina del Rey, Calif., said it wanted to
increase competition.

The Internet Society, in turn, contracted with Afilias to do the actual
work. The society also set up a subsidiary, called the Public Interest
Registry, to oversee Afilias.

Members of a watchdog group, ICANNWatch, said they liked greater
competition, but faulted the process that led to the choice of the new
operator.

Michael Froomkin, an Internet lawyer who teaches at the University of Miami
in Coral Gables, Fla., and is a founding editor of ICANNWatch.org, said,
while he had no reason to believe Afilias would do a bad job, the selection
was "a lost opportunity to create greater competition."

Afilias operates the recently created .info domain and therefore is an
incumbent, he said. "A new player" should have been picked if ICANN truly
wanted to increase competition, he said.

He also said the Internet Society's bid had the edge because some of its
members have close connections to ICANN.

Stuart Lynn, president and chief executive officer of ICANN, dismissed the
criticism as "red herrings from grumpy people." The Internet community is
too close-knit not to have overlapping memberships, ICANN spokeswoman Mary
Hewitt said.

ICANN is trying to make sure users do not see "any blips in the transfer"
Jan. 1, Lynn said.

The Internet Society has been around for a decade - an eternity in Internet
years - and that sort of stability was an important consideration in picking
its proposal, ICANN officials said. Another key factor was that Afilias'
technology is faster than the competition's, they said.

"If you register a .info name today, within two minutes, from anywhere in
the world, you can get to a Web browser and access that site. It has never
been done that fast," said Ram Mohan, chief technology officer for Afilias
in Horsham. "Before we got into business, it used to be anywhere from 12 to
36 hours."

He described the Horsham facility as performing administrative and
technical-support roles for the company's worldwide operations. About 15
people work in Horsham.

Maintaining a database of domain names is technologically humble but
essential work. Mohan likened it to running an electric power utility: You
notice it only when things go wrong.

But, much like a utility, it performs work that can provide a predictable,
if not huge, stream of revenue. There were 11 bidders for the rights to
operate .org.

The .info domain contains nearly a million names, and Afilias earns $5.75
per year for each name. The company will collect $6 per name registered as
.org, and give the Public Interest Registry $2.

(Users typically pay $20 to buy domain names from registrars accredited by
ICANN. The registrars, in turn, pay operators, such as Afilias.)

The .org domain is large but has some catching up to do: There are more than
20 million names registered in .com.

The Internet Society, whose self-styled mission is to increase Internet use
worldwide, and Afilias hope to expand the use of .org.

While .org is open to anyone, it is "a natural home for nonprofits as well
as for profit-making entities that have nonprofit activities," Roland
LaPlante, marketing officer for Afilias, said.

In time, .org users will see better technology and new services, including
"a big education outreach" to increase the domain's usefulness and
popularity, Internet Society spokeswoman Julie Williams said.

David Maher, an Internet Society board member who will become chairman of
the new Public Interest Registry, said its share of the .org revenue would
help fund educational programs to promote the Internet.

That sort of thinking worries some.

David Farber, a technology guru and a founder of ICANNWatch, said it would
be a problem if "these things are treated as cash cows to fund a lot of
things."

Farber, who is on leave from the University of Pennsylvania to teach at
Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said: "The danger is, the money
from .org will be used to fund your favorite little projects. I have never
thought it reasonable to 'tax' Internet users to fund somebody's particular
interests."

Contact Porus P. Cooper at 215-854-4761 or pcooper () phillynews com.

[ Note my comment re cash cow is a hang over from many early use of fee set
asides to fund dubious efforts. They always say that they are intended to
further the Internet and very very seldom do.  Djf (particulars available on
request]

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