The English-language Wikipedia is ‘dark’ today, in protest against a set of bills (nick-named SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate). These bills are intended to create new tools to address both the online commerce in copyright-infringing works and of counterfeit goods (i.e. both Copyright Act and Lanham Act violations). In particular, they aim to target the use of foreign-registered websites for “piracy,” although opponents point to several ways in which domestic websites can also be affected.

Along with Wikipedia, other websites (such as the “social news site” Reddit, are down for the day with a place-holder page urging visitors to protest the two bills. Google’s search site remains live today, but the usual “Google doodle” version of its logo is replaced by a blackout stamp “censoring” the logo. Normally clicking on a “Google doodle” performs a Google search for information about the subject or topic of the doodle. Today, it instead links to a Google-hosted advocacy page in opposition to SOPA and PIPA. Google has also taken the unusual step of slowing the Googlebot, so that sites that have gone dark today in protest of the two bills will see less negative impact on their search rankings.

While much of the technology industry is now engaging is such an unusual protest of the proposed legislation, the bills had already advanced fairly far in the legislative process with the backing of “content industry” associations (the MPAA, ASCAP, AAP, etc.), but also of a wide array of business and labor organizations motivated by the economic importance of U.S. intellectual property and a perceived need for stronger anti-piracy tools—particularly tools capable of reaching foreign sites.

As a result of the uproar in the Internet community, some news reports as of today indicate that DNS blocking may be removed from the bills.

(We provided a “quick guide” to SOPA in December, but given the rapid movement on this legislation, this additional “backgrounder” seems to be in order.)

Much of the most fervent opposition has been related to the provisions of the bills that would create a procedure to compell removal of targeted websites from the databases of DNS and search-engine operators within the United States. Opponents argue that this would be over-broad, and impose major compliance burdens on linking sites, search engines, and any websites hosting user-created content. Opponents have have also argued the likelihood of unintended technical consequences that would “break the Internet.”

It is at the very least interesting to note that this is a move that might seem to cut against the logic of U.S. efforts (via the structure of ICANN, discussed in a previous quick guide) to keep foreign governments or transnational organizations away from political influence on at least the global level of DNS management. (Though other nations can and do manipulate DNS within their territorial jurisdiction and for their domestic users.)

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has begun to accept applications to operate new “generic Top-Level Domains.” A “top-level” domain amounts to the right-most portion of a domain name, after the final dot. Venerable examples of “generic” top-level domains include .com, .edu, .net, and .org. Applicants are to propose new TLDs while applying to be the entity that will maintain a registry of that nominated domain. Unlike previous additions of new TLDs, the new policy does not merely envision a specific one-time expansion of the namespace, but instead creates a policy mechanism for continued, possibly rapid, expansion of the number of TLDs in use.

It is expected that hundreds of new generic Top-Level Domains will be added to the familiar batch we’ve used since the emergence of popular Internet applications. This is a major development in the system of non-state, non-national, governance centered around ICANN. While ICANN has concluded that the expansion of the available “name space” is a progressive and pro-competitive move for the Internet, the action is controversial, with major IP rights-holders and some consumer groups expressing particular qualms. At times, ICANN has also been in tension with elements in the U.S. government over its plans to extend the range of gTLDs, exposing the complicated issues around the degree of control U.S. policy-makers can or should exercise over global Internet governance.

The new generic TLDs will not only be more numerous, but will allow for domains in non-Latin language characters.

What ICANN does

ICANN is the body that governs Internet name-spaces—both the numeric IP addresses that uniquely identify all “hosts” on the network and the mapping of human-readable domain names to that system of network addresses. ICANN is a not-for-profit corporation formed only in 1998, and operates as the top-level governing body for coordination of names and addresses on the Internet.

The status of ICANN is complicated. It is a formally a California non-profit corporation, but seeks to build a global stake-holder network and operate as a global institution. Its functions can only be described as “governance,” yet it is a private-sector entity and is not a trans-national or multi-national organization. ICANN also represents, simultaneously, the deliberate devolution by the United States of the routine authority over Internet naming and the retention of at least potential ultimate control—the domain name system ultimately descended from systems derived under U.S. Defense Department contracts, and through a series of documented understandings with ICANN the U.S. government seems to have ceded vast amounts of control while retaining some unique leverage. Indeed, ICANN may be seen as in part the product of U.S. efforts to disentangle itself from the actual running of the Internet (and the politics involved in that) while avoiding the capture of Internet governance by an international body that would potentially share control with other governments.

While the management of country-code domains are assigned by ICANN to a registry and registrar selected by the government of a sovereign nation, the management of the ‘generic’ top-level domains can be assigned by ICANN (technically through its control of IANA) to a wider range of for-profit or non-profit operators who become responsible for the assignment and coordination of names within the “registry” for that top-level domain. These are alternately referred to as registry operators or NICs (Network Information Centers). Verisign, for instance, has long operated the registry for the .com and .net domains (it acquired Network Solutions, the early (pre-ICANN) operator of these domains, in 2000, and has retained Network Solution’s NIC business). Registrars, as opposed to the registry operators, are entities authorized to register a domain within one or more registries. Registrars must be accredited both by ICANN and by the registry operators for the top-level domains for which they operate. Major registrars who operate within multiple TLDs include GoDaddy, Network Solutions (the business that was sold off by Verisign after the 2000 acquisition), Register.com, and many others. Registrars (many of which are also in the separate web-hosting business) are the businesses with which an end-user in need of a domain for a new website will work.

The following lists point to selected resources of specific interest in light of new gTLDs and ICANN’s status to implement them. This is not a full annotated bibliography of work related to domain name regulation. (Though one of those is in the works.)

Documents