Commerce Dept. Asks ICANN to Drop Fees

Yielding to pressure from Rep. Thomas J. Bliley (R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Commerce, the Clinton administration called on the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers to drop its plans for charging domain name registrars a user fee of up to $1 per registration.

ICANN, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit group formed to manage the domain name system, had proposed the user fee to finance its operations. But Bliley and others viewed it as an unauthorized Internet tax.

In a letter sent to Bliley on Friday, Commerce Department General Counsel Andrew Pincus said the user fee was “an appropriate method for funding ICANN activities.” But he added that he agreed it should be dropped because “it has become controversial.” He pledged to help the cash-strapped ICANN secure short-term funding from the government and said the group should continue seeking financial support from the private sector.

ICANN’s top priority, according to Pincus, should be to “put in place an elected board of directors.” (The current directors were appointed by an Internet supervisory panel.) The Internet community may support ICANN’s user fee proposal once an elected board is in place, he said.

Pincus also called on ICANN to open its board meetings to the public in order to earn the trust of the Internet community.

The letter also criticized Network Solutions, the domain name registrar whose monopoly ICANN is trying to break. The Herndon, Va., company must recognize ICANN’s authority and do more to facilitate competition among companies that register domain names ending in .com, .net and .org, Pincus said.

The Commerce Department and Network Solutions are still negotiating how much the company can charge would-be competitors for access to its registry system. Another question is how much authority Network Solutions will have once its agreement with the government expires in September 2000.