Dot-US Belongs to All of Us

It is hard to imagine that the United States would just turn over to private business the nation’s dot-US Internet address. Currently, dot-us is the cyberspace home only for city and state governments, libraries and other public and quasi-public institutions.

Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, however, has released a plan for letting a private contractor manage the national Internet country code, currently under the Commerce Department’s wing.

Evans would let the contractor earn millions of dollars a year selling off and managing new addresses like business.us and loans.us. Large companies would pay handsome yearly fees for these addresses, but there is no requirement that profits be returned to taxpayers.

Last week, a coalition of 25 nonprofit groups asked Evans to halt the giveaway, saying it would “divest the American people of a unique national resource for no substantial return.” The coalition wants Evans to call a hearing to consider how dot-us addresses could be sold in ways that benefit Americans--by, for example, helping libraries and schools afford access to the growing number of high-fee, high-quality Web sites. Prestigious online scientific journals, for example, can cost more than $10,000 a year to access.

Evans should delay hasty action on privatizing a valuable public resource.

The nonprofit coalition represents the citizens of dot-us at least as well as the federal bureaucrats who came up with the giveaway plan.