[ga] EI and CPTech Letter to DOC re .us

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

                                        Manon Anne Ress
                                        Essential Information
                                        P.O. Box 19405 
                                        Washington, DC 20036

                                        James Love
                                        Consumer Project on Technology
                                        P.O. Box 19367
                                        Washington, DC 20036



July 27, 2001

The Honorable Donald L. Evans 
Secretary of Commerce 
U.S. Department of Commerce 
1401 Constitution Avenue, NW 
Washington, DC  20230 				

Dear Secretary Evans: 

Essential Information and the Consumer Project on Technology are
Washington, DC-based non-profit organizations founded by Ralph Nader. 
Our organizations are involved in a number of projects concerning the
Internet and E-commerce, much of which is documented on the CPTech web
page at http://www.cptech.org.  

We are writing to express our concerns regarding the Department of
Commerce's Request for Quotation (RFQ) [SB1335-01-Q-0740] for services
to establish centralized management and coordination of the .us
top-level domain (usTLD), to propose specific policies regarding the
management of .us, and to join others in requesting an extension of the
July 27, 2001 deadline for applications of the future management of the
.us TLD. 

Today the US national domain, .us, is used almost exclusively for state
and local governments, schools and libraries.  It is a resource
rightfully regarded by the Internet community as a national and public
space, rather than simply another profit opportunity for speculators. 
However, because it is also a potentially lucrative business, the
re-delegation of .us has attracted those more interested in profits than
the public good.  

We believe the current RFQ poses threats to free speech, as well as
privacy - issues that may not trouble some commercial concerns, but
which do concern the people who use the Internet. 

The ICANN Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is not appropriate
for .us TLD registrants.  Many UDRP panels are international and take
positions that are contrary to US public policy, particularly as it
relates to the US First Amendment, but also with respect to US
traditions in trade mark policy, as they relate, for example, to the use
of generic names.  We have outlined a number of such opinions at
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/icann/domaindisputes/
domaindisputes.html. For example, consider the opinion in
Kwasizabantu.org, where the UDRP panel said:

        	"The admitted nature of the use of the domain names ...
includes
alternative views and indeed critical views concerning ...
[KwaSizabantu] and its activities. The Panel holds such activity amounts
to tarnishing the activities associated with the trademark or service
mark "KwaSizabantu" ... Therefore, ... [Rost] does not establish any
rights or legitimate interests ..."

Certainly in the USA, offering critical views is still considered a
legitimate interest.     

Regarding privacy policies, we ask that the registry for .us develop the
least restrictive privacy methods for protecting copyright interests. 
This is quite important, as one expects the expanded .us domain space to
include a much greater scope for personal use, and there is already
significant pressure from the E-commerce sector to strip everyone of
every notion of privacy that one cannot just leave this up to the whims
of the registry. To the degree that the registry is required to provide
information on domain name owners, it should chose the method that does
the least violence to personal privacy.

Also, there are important policy issues concerning the economics of the
domain space - in particular, how domain name users will be protected
from exorbitant pricing. Another important issue is how to fairly manage
any surpluses that are likely to be available, once .us is rescued from
its incredibly poor current management scheme.

First of all, it is important to raise our concerns that the government
and ICANN have both deliberately created a false scarcity in domain name
space, to benefit a handful of Internet registries.  As you know, the
Internet Top Level Domain (TDL) space is extremely limited, given what
is technologically possible.  This is typically justified by a range of
insincere and easily refutable claims that this scarcity is somehow
needed to maintain Internet stability.  As everyone is well aware, the
current artificial scarcity has been designed to create rents for the
handful of businesses that control the existing Internet domain name
space.   Clearly the one firm that has benefited the most, to the tune
of billions in stock market valuation, is Verisign, which now controls
the registry for .com, .net and .org, while managing other registries.  
One major objective of the .us re-delegation would be to ensure that
someone other than Verisign runs, manages and operates .us, so that
there is more competition.

We would hope that the .us TLD, the official US country code, be managed
by a non-profit Registry that would not have the incentive to charge
high prices for domain names.  However, if a profit making firm is given
this resource, the government needs to regulate or limit the prices, or
explain why people are paying a commercial entity large fees to use the
.us domain.   These registration fees are real money, and we resent
having to pay high prices for something that the seller does not create
or add value to.  

There may be alternative methods of making this whole system less of a
rip off.  For example, the plan could be to have an unlimited number of
second level domains auctioned off, with the proceeds going into a fund,
to be spent according to the wishes of the end user domain name
holders.  For example, everyone with a third level domain .us, in this
system, could vote on how the surplus could be spent, in an electronic
referendum, which would be populist, fair, and not subject to the
typical favoritism that so often is associated with ICANN.

Second, it would also make sense to provide the not-for-profit sector
with some of the second level domains, for particular public uses and
civil society sectors.  For example, union.us could go to the unions,
charity.us, lib.us, museum.us or others could be given to umbrella
groups that could manage the pricing and allocation of domains for
relevant constituencies.  This would be better than a centralized system
run by some socially clueless technology firm.   


Sincerely,


Manon Ress


James Love

CC:  Joseph L. Widdup, NIST

-- 
Manon Anne Ress
mress@essential.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030
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