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BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: Business Week ebiz | |||||||||||||||||
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Behave -- or Lose Your Domain Name Here's one way of bringing some order to the lawless Web: Yank the name away from a renegade site Compared to many of the Internet's vexing policy problems, the management of domain names seems comparatively trivial. Consider the Net's far more prominent flash points: Should indecent Web sites be censored? How much intellectual property protection do authors, software writers, and musicians deserve? What type of personal information should be available for public consumption? In contrast, deciding what rules should govern the issuance of new domain names feels almost administrative -- a simple matter of insuring that two parties don't get the same Internet address. Well, appearances can be deceiving. The nonprofit group that's supposed to manage the domain-name system -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- is under attack by everybody from consumer advocate Ralph Nader to House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley (R-Va.). Part of the reason for this controversy is that business executives, lawyers, and techies alike are starting to realize that the management of domain names, rather than being a mere matter of infrastructure, could be one of the most important governance issues facing the Net. Why? Because domain names could be the most powerful way to get people to obey the law. POWERLESS. The Net, as we all know, is boundaryless. A manufacturer of baby cribs in China can open up a Web site and start selling products from Los Angeles to Lyon. If the cribs don't meet American safety standards, or happen to violate French import restrictions, there's not much that legal authorities can do. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, for example, has no power to tell People's Republic Crib Co. how to make its products and little if any ability to monitor its sales. And the enforcement problems aren't just limited to safety issues. The Securities & Exchange Commission is essentially powerless to crack down on stock scams run out of the Cayman Islands -- even if the victims live in Long Island, Miami, and Houston. New York sales tax authorities, similarly, are unable to collect money from out-of-state buyers. And private parties are also in a quandry. It isn't easy for Time Warner to close down a Paraguyan Web site selling pirated music. No U.S. court would have authority to penalize the offending Webmasters.
This may sound far-fetched. But already ICANN is contemplating forcing applicants for new domain names to agree to a set of rules blocking so-called cybersquatting -- the practice of registering well-known corporate brand names as domain names before the actual owners have a chance to do so. Many experts think similar legal restrictions are likely to be added to the domain-name contract in the future. "Anyone interested in controlling the rules under which activities on the Internet take place...is likely to find the existence of a single controlling point awfully tempting," says David Post, a cyberlaw specialist at Temple University School of Law. "After all the talk over the past few years about how difficult it will be to regulate conduct on the Internet, the domain name looks like the Holy Grail, the one place where Internet policy can be promulgated without any of the messy enforcement and jurisdictional problems that bedevil ordinary law-making exercises on the Net."
NO PLANS. Post's concerns have spawned a Web site called ICANNwatch.org. The site, which is devoted to monitoring how ICANN performs its role as domain name manager, is a joint effort with University of Miami Law School Professor Michael Froomkin and University of Pennsylvania Telecommunications Professor David J. Farber. Post's essay "Governing Cyberspace: Where Is James Madison When We Need Him?" is just one of many insightful ruminations by various authors on the site. Because of the potential importance of domain names, Post and others believe that ICANN is in a position to assume an increasing role in Internet governance with the potential to become the preeminent regulatory body in cyberspace. ICANN has repeatedly disavowed any plans to do anything this ambitious. And the mere fact that domain names could be used as a powerful enforcement tool on the Web doesn't necessarily mean they have to be used this way. But enforcing the law on the Net is a tricky problem. Unless other solutions can be developed, don't be surprised if domain-name contracts are pressed into service as a type of back-door regulation.
France covers legal affairs for Business Week in New York _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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 Mike France covers legal affairs for Business Week in New York WEB POINTERS Click here to visit the sites mentioned in this column: ICANN ICANNwatch | ||||||||||||
