Most internet business are facing financial crises today, a year after the dotcom bubble burst. Even the infrastructure companies, those that manufacture the boxes and phone lines, software and PCs that connect people to the internet, are in trouble. For the moment the internet profiteers are licking their wounds.
However, there is one internet business that is doing well, and that is the domain name business. A domain name, such as business.com or cocacola.com, costs virtually nothing to produce. So any company that makes money from selling domain names, or maintaining the central domain name register, in effect has a license to print money.
The major player in the field is VeriSign, a company that until a couple of years ago had a monopoly on the business. VeriSign maintains the central registry of .com, .net, and .org names (and collects US$6 a year for every single name with one of these three extensions). Under a recently signed agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, it will retain this control until 2007.
VeriSign is also a retail name seller. This arrangement allows it to take considerable financial advantage from its position (such as holding on to commercially valuable names whose owners fail to renew them, and then selling them at well above the official price).
VeriSign originally gained this exclusive position through intriguing contacts with seedier parts of the US government. Potential competitors unhappy not to be sharing in the loot are complaining, demanding some of the action. They are now taking up the battle in the US government and courts.
How does it happen that an open and ungoverned network such as the internet finds its affairs fought out in the state structures of one country? This is because changes to the internet's core architecture, including the top-level domains (tlds), can only be done with the approval of the US Department of Commerce. These tlds include .com, .net, and country extensions such as .uk or .au (Australia).
The form that the Department of Commerce's control takes is the power to approve or reject key decisions by ICANN. In particular there the recent ICANN decision to create some additional tlds, but not others, has favoured particular sections of internet business.
With the growth of the internet, ICANN has become tangled in controversy, focussing on its composition and activities. While business interests battle for opportunity, tens of thousands of at-large members are trying to protect the open character of the internet. ICANN's membership is based primarily on business interest group representation, with a few members elected directly by this at-large membership.
The at-large representatives have played an important part in focussing on ICANN's less democratic activities. For this reason there is currently a campaign by sections of the internet industry to abolish these positions.
Far from being a stateless haven, the heart of the internet is increasingly embroiled in battles for political control.
BY GREG HARRIS (gregharris_greenleft@hotmail.com)