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backed by the US and the European Union questioning the right of a few to decide who controls Internet. “Make no bones about it. This is a struggle for control of the Internet and the new plan over domain names is a recipe for cyber-confusion,” a Geneva-based telecommunications expert said. “Unless a majority of Internet users agree, this plan is pretty much on paper,” he added. This vision of cyberdoom may be exaggerated, but it has more than a byte of truth.

To get around this problem the International Ad Hoc Committee of Internet users has suggested a new way of allocating `domain names’ (such as express.indiaworld.com).

This committee wants the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) to adjudicate between competing and conflicting claims and together with the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU), has proposed solutions to trademarks, shortage of available names and domain allocation. Even before the ink on this memorandum of understanding (MOU), signed by such big names like MCI, Digital Equipment, etc. dried, it has been torn apart by the Internet community.

Chief opposer is Network Solutions Incorporated (NSI), the US-based company which till now had the virtual monopoly of assigning domain names for $100 a piece per year. Under the old and existing system you pay the NIC a $100 fee plus $50 a year and you get worldwide rights to any Internet domain name that has not been taken. Many companies have registered international names at random in the hope of selling them to their original owners for a price. Don’t try god.com. It’s taken and you can’t sell it back.

“The real debate has only just begun, we have a long way to go,” Francine Lambert, spokesperson for the ITU told The Indian Express. “This is a move to introduce some discipline and responsibility among Internet users, it’s not perfect, but it’s a beginning,” she added. ITU’s own name, it appears, had been cyberjacked by some other company. Under the new plan anyone applying for an Internet address would have to agree to mediation by a panel of WIPO experts.

Domain names are the Internet’s on-line telephone numbers. They provide a unique identity to sites situated amidst millions of computers talking to each other and it is these general category on-line addresses route and identify cyberspace traffic. Everybody wants a snappy name and in a bid to entice newcomers there has been pressure to get short, easy to remember Internet names preferably memorically related to an establishment, company name, product or service.

The new system will create seven new domain names to remove pressure from the present three — .com, .org and .net — and ease the allocation of domain names according to the profile of the company or organisation opening a site. Imagine a delivery service called toofan.com. The new, to-be-agreed system will also introduce competition and that is where trouble brews most.

The NSI has a direct interest in wanting to retain its monopoly. Since 1993, it has distributed 1.2 million domain names. Since it turned it into a business, it has raked in $60 million. According to Internet gossip, registration of new names is expected to generate fees of some $200 million by mid-1999.

Right in the middle of the Geneva-negotiations, the US State Department instructed its mission in Geneva to contact the ITU and “express concerns about the authority of the ITU Secretariat without authorisation of the member governments, both to hold a full meeting of member States and sector members and to commit actions under the (memorandum of understanding)”.

In other words, the US was not backing the move and without the US which has led international research and use of Internet, there’s little point in having a law. The European Union also sneered at the plan and sulked that it had not been consulted. Many countries and Internet service providers have accused the ITU and other members of the IHAC of `squatting’ on public property. So far so bad.