FC: Commerce Dept reportedly will put .us domain up for bid

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 22:37:17 -0400
From: Michael Sondow <msondow () iciiu org>
Subject: Privatization of .us: The DoC's Request For Quotations

On June 11th, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) will issue a
Solicitation/Request For Quotations (1) for a proposal to operate a
registry for .us, the United States country-code top level domain.

For three years the DoC has conducted a public inquiry into the
reorganization of .us and has decided to put it up for bids, as if
it were a commodity, rather than create a public agency for its
operation. The deadline for submission of proposals is July 26,
2001; that is, less than five weeks from now.

Formerly run by Jon Postel at ISI (U.S.C.), the .us registry is
currently run by Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI), a division of
Verisign. NSI has done a very poor job. It has become difficult if
not impossible to make new registrations and data changes like
nameserver updates.
For-profit companies like NSI, whose major revenue comes from
servicing commercial TLDs or selling commercial domain names, have
little incentive to spend time and money on free services, and they
have no interest in developing .us to compete with their commercial
TLDs.

The notice of the DoC's solicitation states that the chosen registry
operator will not be permitted to act as a registrar for .us. How,
then, will it pay for its operations? Two methods present
themselves:
1) charge for the delegation and servicing of subdomains in .us; 2)
create new second-level domains like .com.us and contract out
registration services for these, either keeping the legacy
locality-based domains (including the 3LDs run by the subdelegation
managers) free of charge, or eliminating them altogether.

A number of commercial for-profit companies will be making
proposals. Two of these are Registrars.com and usTLD.org
(us-register.com). The first - Registrars.com - is a division of a
large networking corporation named Network Commerce, Inc. This
company has stated to a .us locality manager that the company
proposes to maintain the present structure of the TLD as well as the
present locality managers without charge as a service to the
community. Whether they would actually do so once they were
operating .us and its new commercial SLDs is anyone's guess.

However, Network Commerce, Inc. appears to be on the verge of
bankruptcy (June 7 share price of 14 cents!), and is the defendant
in a class action lawsuit by shareholders (2). Even if the company
manages to survive and wins the .us registry, they are in no
position to expend time, effort, and resources on unprofitable
operations like the present locality-based .us delegations.

The second company, usTLD.org (us-register.com), is an ISP that
hopes to profit from commercialization of domain names under the
locality-based structure of .us without creating new SLDs, and has
promised not to charge the locality managers for their delegations
and perhaps even pay them a kick-back for registrations.

Here is what usTLD.org's CEO wrote to disgruntled subdelegation
managers who thought that usTLD.org planned to charge them fees: "I
am sorry if you guys got the impression that usTLD was going to
start charging YOU for the services that YOU are providing!  On the
contrary we intend to see that you get PAID for your work. The
parties paying for these services will be the Registrars who are
selling the domains for a profit".

This is not very good news for the public entites you service. But
it is probably unlikely, in any case, that the DoC will accept a
proposal that does not provide for the exploitation of SLDs under
.us, since almost all comments received during the public inquiry
suggested that this be done, on the grounds that only shortened
domain names would be popular and commercially viable and save .us
from oblivion.

There are sure to be other proposals submitted to the Dept. of
Commerce, including one from Verisign or some corporation created by
Verisign and its allies the ICANN-accredited .com registrars. These
other proposals will most likely propose one of the above schemes,
or a combination of them.

There is, however, an alternative to commercial schemes for making
.us profitable, and that is to run the registry as a non-profit
corporation. This has been done in a number of countries for their
ccTLD, for example Canada (3). The non-profit concept is the
motivation behind this post.

Briefly, the non-profit concept has the following key points:

1) The .us registry would be run in accordance with policies
established by a newly-created national association having a
membership composed of delegation managers and the registrants they
serve.

2) All functions of this association, including the election of its
board of directors, would be conducted by democratic methods.

3) The registry operation would have two parts: one for the
maintainance of the present locality-based system, the other for the
commercial exploitation of new second-level domains in .us such as
.com.us, .net.us, .lab.us, .nyc.us, etc.

4) The proceeds from the commercial exploitation of these new
subdomains, together with membership fees and dues and funding from
grant agencies, would be used to pay for maintainance of the legacy
delegation system and the operation of the association.

This non-profit concept has already been discussed on mailing lists
of delegation managers and non-profit entites interested in keeping
.us in the public interest, and is supported by many. A proposal
elaborating this concept, in response to the DoC's solicitation, is
in the process of being written.

If you are in agreement that .us in its present form should be
maintained and that it should remain a public service, and if you
believe that the delegation managers and the users of .us should
take responsibility for ensuring that this happen, you can help by
discussing it with the registrants you service and, together with
them, offering your help and your support to this effort. Please
keep in mind that the time is short.

Michael Sondow (ICIIU)
In defense of the public interest
in the Internet domain name system.

Notes:

1. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/usrfp/cbd52501.txt

2. http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/010607/17658.html

3. http://www.cira.ca




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