Icann under fire over domain name fees

The international body in charge of managing internet domain names is coming under fire from all directions. Countries are rebelling against requests to pay it maintenance fees to look after regional servers, while domain name registrars are taking legal action in response to some of its decisions.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is responsible for maintaining the internet's 13 root servers. Until recently, country domain servers - also known as regional servers - were looked after free of charge. But the organisation has now announced plans to charge countries for controlling regional domains such as .uk and .fr.

"What Icann has put in place after consultation with all those concerned is an expense-based cost structure," said Louis Touton, vice president and general counsel at Icann. "Our budget is $4m to $5m per year, and we have allocated a 35 per cent share of that to the country level."

The 245 Country Code Top Level Domains (CCTLDs) pay according to a sliding scale, depending on how many subscribers they have. "At one end of the spectrum, you have people saying everyone should pay the same, which would work out at around $5000 each, but that seems unfair for the very large majority of CCTLDs which are quite small," Touton explained.

"The Falkland Islands, for example, has 12 entries. At the other end of the scale, some of the smaller CCTLDs think they should pay nothing, or even be subsidised by the larger CCTLDs," he added.

Meanwhile, some of the larger CCTLDs believe that their higher levy should entitle them to greater levels of influence over Icann than their smaller equivalents.

Nick Wood, managing director at Net Searchers, said he believed that Icann's problems stem from its being a private organisation. "There was not enough attention paid to how Icann would earn its living. The original idea was to levy a fee on registrees," he said.

"But someone pointed out that, to the US citizenry, this was taxation without representation, so it was not allowed. Thus, we had a body that had the brief of controlling registration, but without any cash. They have a very, very small staff, no permanent base outside the US, and not enough cash for things like educational programmes and work to improve standards," he added.

New domain names
At the same time as announcing its new maintenance pricing model, Icann also launched seven new domain names - .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .museum, .aero and .coop - which look set to be made available by the middle of next year.

Of these, .biz and .info are intended to become alternatives to .com; .name is designed for individuals; .museum, .aero and .coop will be restricted to museums, aeronautical companies and co-operatives respectively; and .pro, proposed by Net Searchers' virtual internet unit, will be restricted to professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

But Wood claimed that the move would also benefit businesses. "It's first come, only served - so if you are Smiths Crisps, and Smiths Industries has Smiths.com, then to introduce Smiths.biz gives you another chance," he explained.

He added that not all of the 'approved' names would necessarily be used, however, and that others could be added at a later date. "It's quite important to note that Icann says this is a controlled experiment to see if the system is robust enough to support new names, and to see if there is public demand," he said.

But this decision has also come in for criticism. In the UK, unlike most countries, alternative second-level domain names such as .plc.uk and .org.uk are already available. However, they have proved far less popular than the more standard .co.uk, leading some observers to wonder whether the new top-level domain names will take off.

Another potential problem is a renewed wave of cybersquatting - the practice of registering domain names similar to those of established organisations with a view to profiting from them at a later date. According to Gartner, companies are asking for trouble if they fail to register variants on their names, including malicious ones such as 'xxxsucks'.

Audrey Apfel, a vice president and research director at Gartner, said it costs the typical Global 2000 company about $75,000 up-front to register the different variants, and that they face further ongoing costs of about $20,000 per year to cover mergers and acquisitions, and the creation of new domain names. Obviously, the more top-level domain names are added, the more it costs them.

"The addition of these seven new high-level domain names is only the tip of the iceberg," Apfel explained. "Organisations must register names in multiple registries for both offensive and defensive purposes, but with the knowledge that no one can cover all the options. The future will bring more options, not less."

Court actions
But Icann is also finding itself being challenged in the courts, albeit fairly unsuccessfully. Back in June, for example, would-be registrar Afternic.com took action against the organisation over its refusal to provide it with a licence. Icann claimed that Afternic was participating in cybersquatting by auctioning domain names that were similar to those of existing companies. In the end, Afternic withdrew its suit.

Elsewhere, US registrar Economic Solutions Inc (ESI) attempted to prevent Icann from releasing .biz as a top-level domain name on the grounds that it was too similar to the country domain name for Belize - .bz - which Belize wanted to sell. But the court denied ESI's request for a temporary restraining order against Icann.

More recently, RegLand, which enables customers to 'pre-register' for non-existent but potential domain names such as .shop or .kids, has taken action against Icann for scaring away potential customers by warning them that pre-registration is "premature".

While such cases may not directly threaten Icann's survival, they do cost money. "If things do devolve into many lawsuits, it could be a problem," Touton conceded. "We just try to get these things resolved by discussion."

And Wood believes this is important if Icann wishes to maintain its position as a non-governmental agency.

"The question is, does it have enough money to survive. Is it going to be able to staff up enough to properly monitor this experiment?" he asked. "If it's going to mature into the body it needs to be, it needs to be working with the industry and users because the important thing is to keep governments out of the process."

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