>TI DOMAIN NAME PLAYERS AIR THEIR IDEAS.

By Nick Patience The battle over the future of the internet's domain name and numbering system was rejoined at an open meeting in Washington DC on Friday where groups and individuals came together to try and hammer out a format for the group that will decide how to manage and expand the domain name system (DNS) in the future. The group will eventually be just one of the three supporting groups to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), but is likely to be the most bitterly fought over because of the power it will have to grant ready-made business opportunities on a plate to selected companies. However, as one of the participants said later, those present were not fighting over the rights to become the domain name supporting organization (DNSO), as it will be known, rather they were trying to finalize the bylaws and rules by which the DNSO should be run. Eventually, depending on the type of membership structure adopted, anybody who wants to should be able to join the DNSO. But before all that can happen, the DNSO has to be formed. Applications to do just that are due with ICANN by February 5, which is proving a fairly hard target to meet for many of the groups vying for position, it seems. The Washington meeting was arranged by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). The following day, January 23 saw an open workshop at the Harvard University Berkman law school to debate issues of membership, in particular what type of membership structure should ICANN and its supporting organizations adopt. ICANN interim chair Esther Dyson, who addresses the meeting in the morning, said that ideally ICANN would like to receive just one proposal, but is prepared for more than that. What is more important, she says, is evidence of a bottom-up consensus behind the proposal. Whatever ICANN receives, they will be posted on the ICANN.org web site for a comment period and the board will look to see how much support the proposals get. Following Dyson's address, the Friday fun began with presentations from the three leading groups: DNSO.org (a group that purloined the name early on but did not exist in a recognized format before), the International Trademark Association (INTA), which represents the holders of major trademarks, has been involved in this process for some time and is aligned to some extent to the Internet Society (ISOC) and finally, the Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC), a group that submitted an alternative proposal to the US government in the process last fall that led to ICANN being awarded its contract. The DNSO, like the other two supporting organizations (protocol and IP addressing) will each elect three board members to the proposed 19-strong ICANN board, the first of which is due to be in place by October 1 this year. Following the presentation of each group's proposal for the organization of the DNSO, intervenor presentations were heard from Network Solutions, the Council of Registrars (CORE), the Council of European National Top level domain registries  (CENTR), and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). There then followed discussions of the critical issues, an attempt to form consensus points from the meeting and then a wrap-up. However, it should be noted that several of the groups are intertwined. For example, DNSO.org was established last September by the oversight committee of CORE and includes many people from CORE plus some from the INTA, so it would be fair to say that they were over-represented at the meeting. Amadeu Abril i Abril, who was representing the DNSO.org at the meet ing, naturally believed that the proposals from the DNSO and the INTA were "much further along than the other groups." Meanwhile Jay Fenello, representing the ORSC, believed that the ORSC and another proposal from the Association of Internet Professionals had a broad consensus of support while the DNSO and INTA plans were from a small, but powerful group. One of the first tasks of the DNSO will be to advise the ICANN board on which companies should be permitted to start competing with Network Solutions Inc (NSI) in the market to register domain names in the .com, .net and .org domain name registries. In addition, it is likely to choose one or more additional top-level domains to add to the internet root system. Leading candidates for that include .web, .info and .per, and then registries and registrars must be assigned to those too. Dyson says that she and the rest of the ICANN board would be satisfied with a proposal that includes "red lines" and indications of who supports which particular part of the propo sal - in other words it does not have to be finished and bound in leather, the level of grassroots support is what is important. "We're getting close here, but we haven't succeeded yet," she says. Abril said that despite the remaining differences between the groups, "no-one's going to go home if their proposal doesn't get picked." There will be plenty of conference calls and email list discussions between now and February 5.