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Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
Signposts in Cyberspace
The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
Committee on Internet Navigation and the Domain Name System: Technical Alternatives and Policy Implications
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington,D.C. www.nap.edu
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Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001
NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ANI-9909852 and by the National Research Council. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Commerce Department.
International Standard Book Number 0-309-09640-5 (Book)
International Standard Book Number 0-309-54979-5 (PDF)
Cover designed by Jennifer M. Bishop.
Copies of this report are available from the
National Academies Press,
500 Fifth Street, N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, D.C. 20055, (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313 in the Washington metropolitan area. Internet, http://www.nap.edu
Copyright 2005 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
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Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Wm. A. Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Wm. A. Wulf are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.
www.national-academies.org
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COMMITTEE ON INTERNET NAVIGATION AND THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM: TECHNICAL ALTERNATIVES AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
ROGER LEVIEN,
Strategy & Innovation Consulting,
Chair
S. ROBERT AUSTEIN,
Internet Systems Consortium
STANLEY M. BESEN,
Charles River Associates
CHRISTINE L. BORGMAN,
University of California, Los Angeles
TIMOTHY CASEY,
University of Nevada, Reno
HUGH DUBBERLY,
Dubberly Design Office
PATRIK FÄLTSTRÖM,
Cisco Systems
PER-KRISTIAN HALVORSEN,
Hewlett-Packard Labs
MARYLEE JENKINS,
Arent Fox, PLLC
JOHN C. KLENSIN,
Independent Consultant
MILTON L. MUELLER,
Syracuse University
SHARON L. NELSON,
Washington State Attorney General’s Office
CRAIG PARTRIDGE,
BBN Technologies
WILLIAM J. RADUCHEL,
Ruckus Network
HAL R. VARIAN,
University of California, Berkeley
Staff
ALAN S. INOUYE, Study Director (through December 2004)
CHARLES N. BROWNSTEIN, Director (from January 2004)
MARGARET MARSH HUYNH, Senior Program Assistant
KRISTEN BATCH, Research Associate
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COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
JEANNETTE M. WING,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Chair
ERIC BENHAMOU,
Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC
DAVID D. CLARK,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Chair Emeritus
WILLIAM DALLY,
Stanford University
MARK E. DEAN,
IBM Almaden Research Center
DEBORAH ESTRIN,
University of California, Los Angeles
JOAN FEIGENBAUM,
Yale University
HECTOR GARCIA-MOLINA,
Stanford University
KEVIN KAHN,
Intel Corporation
JAMES KAJIYA,
Microsoft Corporation
MICHAEL KATZ,
University of California, Berkeley
RANDY H. KATZ,
University of California, Berkeley
WENDY A. KELLOGG,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
SARA KIESLER,
Carnegie Mellon University
BUTLER W. LAMPSON,
Microsoft Corporation,
Member Emeritus
TERESA H. MENG,
Stanford University
TOM M. MITCHELL,
Carnegie Mellon University
DANIEL PIKE,
GCI Cable and Entertainment
ERIC SCHMIDT,
Google, Inc.
FRED B. SCHNEIDER,
Cornell University
WILLIAM STEAD,
Vanderbilt University
ANDREW J. VITERBI,
Viterbi Group, LLC
CHARLES N. BROWNSTEIN, Director
KRISTEN BATCH, Research Associate
JENNIFER M. BISHOP, Program Associate
JANET BRISCOE, Manager, Program Operations
JON EISENBERG, Senior Program Officer
RENEE HAWKINS, Financial Associate
MARGARET MARSH HUYNH, Senior Program Assistant
HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Scientist
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer
JANICE SABUDA, Senior Program Assistant
GLORIA WESTBROOK, Senior Program Assistant
BRANDYE WILLIAMS, Staff Assistant
For more information on CSTB, see its Web site at <http://www.cstb.org>, write to CSTB, National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20001, call (202) 334-2605, or e-mail the CSTB at cstb@nas.edu.
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Preface
The Domain Name System (DNS), which was developed in the early 1980s, provides a way of associating alphanumeric names, which are easier for humans to use, with the numerical addresses that designate every location on the Internet. The system of DNS servers distributed across the Internet invisibly converts the names—serving as signposts in cyberspace—into the numerical addresses required by network routers to reach the signposted locations.
The mnemonic quality of domain names became a practical necessity when the rapid increase in the use of e-mail and the World Wide Web caused the number of Internet users and uses to increase tremendously. Web sites often became known to their visitors by their distinctive domain names—for example, pepsi.com or whitehouse.gov. Carefully chosen domain names often enabled a searcher to navigate to a site simply by guessing (e.g., www.un.org). Consequently, those signposts gained economic, social, cultural, and political value and they became the objects of pride, competition, and dispute. It was fitting, therefore, that the DNS also provided the name—the Dot-Com Era—for the period of the 1990s when “gold rush fever” drove frenzied efforts to stake out and exploit virtually every potentially valuable site on the Web. Inevitably, such efforts led to intense conflicts, especially disputes involving trademarks, which provided the impetus for the 1998 congressional mandate to initiate this study (see Box P.1). However, the passage of time, the rapid evolution of the Internet and the DNS, the additional and differing interests of the funding agencies, and the logic of the committee’s charter have resulted in a report whose scope differs in some respects from the original
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BOX P.1
Excerpt from Public Law 105-305
SEC. 6. STUDY OF EFFECTS ON TRADEMARK RIGHTS OF ADDING GENERIC TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS
(b) Matters To Be Assessed in Study.—The study shall assess and, as appropriate, make recommendations for policy, practice, or legislative changes relating to—
(1) the short-term and long-term effects on the protection of trademark rights and consumer interests of increasing or decreasing the number of generic top-level domains;
(2) trademark rights clearance processes for domain names, including—
(A) whether domain name databases should be readily searchable through a common interface to facilitate the clearing of trademark rights and proposed domain names across a range of generic top-level domains;
(B) the identification of what information from domain name databases should be accessible for the clearing of trademark rights; and
(C) whether generic top-level domain registrants should be required to provide certain information;
(3) domain name trademark rights dispute resolution mechanisms, including how to—
(A) reduce trademark rights conflicts associated with the addition of any new generic top-level domains; and
(B) reduce trademark rights conflicts through new technical approaches to Internet addressing;
(4) choice of law or jurisdiction for resolution of trademark rights disputes relating to domain names, including which jurisdictions should be available for trademark rights owners to file suit to protect such trademark rights;
(5) trademark rights infringement liability for registrars, registries, or technical management bodies;
(6) short-term and long-term technical and policy options for Internet addressing schemes and the impact of such options on current trademark rights issues; and
(7) public comments on the interim report and on any reports that are issued by intergovernmental bodies.
congressional request, but is as a result more responsive to the current interests of the report’s sponsors and audience.
CURRENT CONTEXT AND STUDY TASK
Although the initial feverish period of Internet exploitation appears to have passed, in its third decade the DNS faces new challenges arising from continued growth in the size and scope of the Internet and from its
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increasing integration into almost every aspect of human activity almost everywhere on the globe. The Internet needs more signposts, in more languages, to satisfy more uses and users. And the DNS has to be carefully developed and managed to ensure that it can meet those needs while continuing to provide reliable, efficient, and secure service.
Furthermore, even if the DNS successfully adapts and grows, users of the Internet will confront new challenges in reaching the resources that they are seeking on the Internet, whether they are educational, social, political, cultural, commercial, or recreational. The challenges will arise not from the absence of resources or of signposts for them, but from their presence in such volume and variety that navigating through the maze to find the right ones may become too arduous or too complex for most users. Reciprocally, those who put resources on the Internet will want them to be easily found by their prospective users in the cluttered bazaar of competing or confusing resources and signposts on the Internet. Thus, the larger issue of the third decade of the DNS is that of navigation through the Internet—the need for its users to find their way quickly and confidently to the resources they desire and for its resources to be easily and reliably found by the users they seek.
This study builds on CSTB’s prior work related to the Internet, most notably on The Internet’s Coming of Age and The Digital Dilemma.1 One of the important lessons from this prior work is that contentious issues in information technology policy (e.g., the domain name trademark issues as described in Public Law 105-305) are often much more complex and require analysis in a much larger context than a popular characterization of “us versus them” would suggest. In the interval between the enactment of Public Law 105-305 and the initiation of this study, CSTB was able to conduct preliminary background work to develop a statement of task (see Box P.2) that addresses the congressional mandate but also ensures that the necessary larger context is included explicitly. Moreover, the larger context was necessary to respond appropriately to the interests of the National Science Foundation, which joined with the U.S. Department of Commerce as co-sponsors of this study.
COMMITTEE COMPOSITION AND PROCESS
The CSTB convened a cross-disciplinary study committee comprising computer scientists and engineers, information science/retrieval and
1
See Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), National Research Council (NRC), The Internet’s Coming of Age, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2001; and CSTB, NRC, The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 2000.
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BOX P.2
Statement of Task
This project will examine the future of Internet navigation and the Domain Name System (DNS) in light of the evolution and interaction of Internet usage, information technology, the economy, and society. The original purpose of the DNS was to provide identifiers for network objects that are more easily remembered and enduring than the numerical addresses and port numbers used by the network infrastructure. However, domain names are now often used for purposes for which they were not originally intended, such as searching, corporate identification, and marketing. And certain domain names, especially those in the .com top-level domain, have acquired substantial economic value, leading to conflict and competition over their ownership and a perceived scarcity of desirable names.
The continuing increase in the number of Internet users and sites, the deepening integration of the Internet into the economy and social processes, the growth in embedded computing devices, and the possible introduction of permanent personal and object identifiers—among other factors—pose challenges to the continued viability and usefulness of the DNS, as currently constituted. This project will describe and evaluate emerging technologies and identify how they might affect the ability of users to find what they are seeking on the Internet and the role of the DNS. Some of the topics to be considered include extension of the DNS through the addition of generic top-level domains and multilingual domain names; introduction of new name assignment and indexing schemes (including alternate root servers); adoption of new directory structures or services for locating information resources, services, or sites of interest; and deployment of improved user interfaces.
navigation experts, lawyers, public policy analysts, a graphic designer and design planner, economists, and business strategists. Many but not all of the members were directly engaged with the DNS or with Internet navigation (see Appendix A for the biographies of committee members). The committee members brought different and complementary perspectives to the examination of the DNS and Internet navigation. In some cases, they also held views that strongly conflicted with those of other committee members. The conclusions reached and the recommendations developed by the committee are thus the products of a multidimensional examination of the issues and a careful negotiation of agreements among members holding contrasting opinions. The sharp discussions and e-mail threads fueled by the committee’s diversity of experience and opinion helped it to avoid overly simple conclusions or recommendations reflecting just one perspective. Information gathering, discussion, argument,
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The technologies that support finding information on the Internet are deployed within a complex and contentious national and international policy context. The “right” to use a particular domain name, like any name, can often be disputed. These disputes include conflicts among commercial claimants as well as conflicts between non-commercial and commercial claimants. Effective solutions must consider the potentially competing interests of domain name registrants and trademark holders; the different interests of stakeholders including businesses, from small firms to multinational corporations; educational, arts, and research institutions; not-for-profit charitable and service organizations; government entities at all levels from town to nation; nation-states and international organizations; and individuals (i.e., the general public); as well as public interests such as freedom of speech and personal privacy.
The project’s report will examine the degree to which the options offered by new technology or new uses of existing technology can mitigate concerns regarding commercial and public interests (which will include a discussion of trademark-related issues), facilitate or impede further evolution of the Internet, and affect steps being taken to enhance competition among domain name registrars, the portability of Internet names, and the stability of the Internet. For each of the prospective technologies, the final report is expected to characterize the institutions, governance structures, policies, and procedures that should be put in place to complement it and will specify the research (if any) required to design, develop, and implement the technology successfully. Also identified will be the options foregone or created by particular technologies and the difficulties associated with each technological alternative.
negotiation, and compromise were the stages the committee passed through in addressing most of the topics.
The committee did its work through its own deliberations and by soliciting input from a number of other experts (see Appendix B for a list of those who briefed the committee) and from the international public through an open invitation published on the Web.2 It first met in April 2001 and six times subsequently in plenary session. Additional information was derived from reviewing the published literature, monitoring selected listservs and Web sites, and obtaining informal input at various conferences and other meetings. Committee members and National Re-
2
See “The Future of Internet Navigation and the Domain Name System: An Invitation to Individuals Worldwide to Provide Input to a Study Conducted by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,” available at <http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/project_dns_input.html>.
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Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Aristotle Balogh, VeriSign, Inc.
Timothy Bray, Textuality
J. Beckwith Burr, Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering
kc claffy, Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
David D. Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Steve Crocker, Shinkuro, Inc.
Bruce Croft, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Leslie Daigle, VeriSign, Inc.
Graeme Dinwoodie, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Joseph Farrell, University of California, Berkeley
Michael Froomkin, University of Miami
Hector Garcia-Molina, Stanford University
Marti Hearst, University of California, Berkeley
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Randy H. Katz, University of California, Berkeley
Butler W. Lampson, Microsoft Corporation
F. Thomson Leighton, Akamai Technologies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael Lesk, Rutgers University
Lars-Johan Liman, Autonomica
Clifford Lynch, Coalition for Networked Information
M. Stuart Lynn, Independent Consultant*
Tom M. Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University
Ivan Png, National University of Singapore
Fred B. Schneider, Cornell University
Paul Vixie, PAIX.net, Inc.
Tan Tin Wee, National University of Singapore
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Alexander H. Flax, independent consultant, and Joseph Bannister, University of Southern California. Appointed by the National Research Council, they were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
*
Formerly, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
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Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1
1
NAVIGATING THE INTERNET: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXT
19
1.1 The Internet,
20
1.2 The Domain Name System,
24
1.3 Internet Navigation,
28
1.4 The Dynamics of Change,
29
1.4.1 Increasing Scale,
30
1.4.2 Technological Progress,
30
1.4.3 Increasing Economic Value,
31
1.4.4 Increasing Social Value,
31
1.4.5 Internationalization,
32
1.5 Internet Naming and Navigation,
33
1.6 Objectives of This Report,
35
1.7 Roadmap for This Report,
37
2
THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM: EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION
39
2.1 Origin of the Domain Name System,
39
2.2 Designing the Domain Name System,
42
2.2.1 Simple, Mnemonic, and Deeply Hierarchical Names,
45
2.2.2 Experimental Features,
46
2.3 Deploying the Domain Name System,
47
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2.3.1 Caching,
47
2.3.2 Lookup Timeouts,
48
2.3.3 Convergence in Electronic Mail Systems,
49
2.3.4 The Whois Database,
52
2.3.5 The DNS as a Production System,
53
2.4 Continuing Growth and Evolution of the Internet as a Technical Infrastructure,
54
2.5 Economic and Social Value of Domain Names,
57
2.5.1 Demand for Domain Names and Emergence of a Market,
57
2.5.2 The Rise of Conflicts Over Domain Names,
61
Trademark Conflicts,
63
Beyond Trademark Conflicts,
67
Beyond Second-Level Domain Names,
70
2.5.3 Whois,
72
2.6 Globalization,
73
2.7 Administration of Domain Names,
74
3
THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM: CURRENT STATE
79
3.1 Operation of the Domain Name System,
80
3.1.1 A New, Remote Query,
82
3.1.2 Local Query,
84
3.1.3 Repeat Query,
85
3.2 Architecture of the Domain Name System,
87
3.2.1 Name Space,
87
3.2.2 Hierarchical Structure,
87
3.2.3 Programs: BIND and Others,
88
3.2.4 Standards,
91
DNS Zone Data File,
92
DNS Message Format,
92
3.2.5 Functions and Institutions,
93
Maintenance of the DNS Standards—The Internet Engineering Task Force,
93
Providing Root Name Server Software—Internet Software Consortium, Inc., and Other Software Providers,
95
3.2.6 Assessment,
95
3.3 Implementation—The Domain Name System Root Zone,
96
3.3.1 Characteristics of the Root Zone,
97
Defining Characteristics,
97
Critical Characteristics,
97
Unique Characteristics,
98
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3.3.2 Technical System of the Root Zone,
100
The Root Zone File,
100
The Root Name Servers,
100
3.3.3 Institutional Framework of the Root Zone,
105
Approving the Root Zone File—U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN,
105
Maintaining the Root Zone File—VeriSign,
108
Selecting the Root Name Server Operators—Self-Selection,
108
Operating the Root Name Servers—The Root Name Server Operators,
109
3.3.4 Assessment,
110
3.4 Implementation—The Top-Level Domains,
113
3.4.1 Characteristics of the TLDs,
113
ccTLDs,
113
gTLDs,
114
Recharacterizing TLDs,
116
3.4.2 Technical System of the TLDs,
120
3.4.3 Institutional Framework of the TLDs,
121
Selecting New TLDs,
122
Selecting the Organizations Responsible for the TLDs,
125
Selecting the TLD Registry Operators,
129
Operating the TLD Registries,
133
3.4.4 Assessment,
133
3.5 Implementation—The Second- and Third-Level Domains,
134
3.5.1 Technical System of the Second- and Third-Level Domains,
134
3.5.2 Institutional Framework of the Second- and Third-Level Domains,
135
Selecting the Organizations to Register Domains,
135
Registering Domain Names,
137
Resolving Domain Name Conflicts,
140
3.5.3 Assessment,
150
3.6 Summary,
150
4
THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM: TECHNOLOGY PROSPECTS
152
4.1 Improving the Security of the Domain Name System,
153
4.1.1 Mechanics of DNSSEC,
154
4.1.2 Deployment of DNSSEC,
156
4.2 Linking the Telephone and Internet Naming System,
158
4.2.1 Mechanics and Operations of ENUM,
160
4.2.2 Technical and Public Policy Issues,
162
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4.2.3 Alternate Models,
163
4.3 Internationalizing Domain Names,
164
4.3.1 Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications,
165
Client-Side Support,
167
4.3.2 Registries and Registrars,
169
4.3.3 Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Scripts,
170
4.3.4 Conclusions,
173
4.4 Responding to Domain Name Errors,
173
4.4.1 Traffic Aggregation,
174
4.4.2 Site Finder by VeriSign,
175
Technical Issues,
176
Institutional Issues,
182
4.4.3 Conclusions,
184
5
THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM: INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
187
5.1 Governance of the Domain Name System,
189
5.1.1 Relationship to Governance of the Internet,
190
5.1.2 Where Should Stewardship of the DNS Reside?,
190
5.1.3 Alternatives,
192
Alternative A: Existing Intergovernmental Organization—International Telecommunication Union,
192
Alternative B: International Treaty Organization,
195
Alternative C: Private Organization with International Participation,
195
5.2 Management of the Domain Name System,
198
5.2.1 Scope of ICANN’s Authority,
199
5.2.2 Composition of the ICANN Board,
200
5.2.3 Nature of ICANN’s Management Processes,
202
5.2.4 Alternatives,
204
Alternative A: Markle Foundation Proposal (2002),
204
Alternative B: Non-governmental Organization and Academic ICANN Study Proposal (2001),
206
Alternative C: ICANN as Registry for the Root (2004),
208
Alternative D: New.net Proposal—ICANN as a Private Trade Association (2002),
211
Alternative E: Center for Democracy and Technology Proposal—Narrowed Scope with Broad Participation (2004),
212
Alternative F: Reformed ICANN—Narrowed Scope with Broad Participation (2003),
214
Summary of the Alternatives,
217
5.2.5 Conclusions and Recommendation,
217
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5.3 Oversight and Operation of Root Name Servers,
219
5.3.1 Current Situation: Diverse Autonomy,
219
Description,
219
Evaluation,
221
5.3.2 Alternatives,
222
Alternative A: Funding and Regulation,
222
Alternative B: Competitive Market,
224
Alternative C: Distributed Root Zone File,
226
Alternative D: DOC Relaxes MoU Requirement,
228
Summary of the Alternatives,
228
5.3.3 Conclusions and Recommendations,
229
5.4 Regulation of Generic Top-Level Domains,
230
5.4.1 Should New gTLDs Be Added? If So, How Many New gTLDs, and How Fast?,
231
Technical and Operational Performance Issues,
232
User Needs and Economic Issues,
234
Recommendations,
238
5.4.2 If New gTLDs Are to Be Added, What Types Should They Be, and How Should They and Their Operators Be Selected?,
239
Which Types of gTLDs Should Be Added?,
240
How Should the Operators of gTLDS Be Selected?,
242
What Selection Process Should Be Used?,
244
5.4.3 Recommendations,
252
5.5 Oversight of Country-Code Top-Level Domains,
254
5.5.1 Current Situation,
255
5.5.2 Alternatives,
257
Alternative A: “Thick” ICANN,
259
Alternative B: “Thin” ICANN,
260
Alternative C: International Oversight,
261
Alternative D: Self-governing Root Management Organization,
262
Comparison of the Four Alternatives,
262
5.5.3 Conclusions,
263
5.6 Resolution of Conflicts Over Domain Names,
263
5.6.1 Assessment of the UDRP,
264
5.6.2 Proposed Improvements to the UDRP,
268
5.6.3 Disputes Concerning Internationalized Domain Names,
271
5.7 Provision and Protection of Whois Data,
273
5.7.1 Assessment of Whois Data Issues,
273
Data Accuracy,
274
Data Privacy,
275
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5.7.2 Whois and Internationalized Domain Names,
278
5.7.3 Conclusion and Recommendation,
279
6
INTERNET NAVIGATION: EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION
281
6.1 The Nature of Internet Navigation,
282
6.1.1 Vast and Varied Resources for Multiple Purposes,
282
6.1.2 Two-sided Process,
283
6.1.3 Complexity and Diversity of Uses, Users, and Providers,
285
6.1.4 Lack of Human Intermediaries,
287
6.1.5 Democratization of Information Access and Provision,
288
6.1.6 Lack of Context or Lack of Skill,
290
6.1.7 Lack of Persistence,
291
6.1.8 Scale,
294
6.1.9 The Sum of the Differences,
294
6.2 Internet Navigation Aids and Services—History,
295
6.2.1 Aiding Navigation via the Internet,
296
6.2.2 Aiding Navigation Through the World Wide Web,
298
6.3 Addendum—Searching the Web Versus Searching Libraries,
308
7
INTERNET NAVIGATION: CURRENT STATE
313
7.1 Navigation Aids and Services,
314
7.1.1 Direct Access via a Uniform Resource Locator or Domain Name,
314
7.1.2 Direct Access via Hyperlinks,
315
7.1.3 Direct Access via Bookmarks,
316
7.1.4 Direct Access via KEYWORDS,
317
7.1.5 Direct Access via Metadata,
319
7.1.6 Navigation via Directory Systems,
324
7.1.7 Navigation via Search Engines,
326
Algorithmic Search,
327
Monetized Search,
330
Search Engine Marketing and Optimization,
331
The Deep, Dark, or Invisible Web,
332
Metasearch Engines,
335
7.1.8 Use of Navigation Aids,
335
7.2 Internet Navigation—Institutional Framework,
338
7.2.1 The Commercial Providers of Navigation Services,
338
7.2.2 The Business of Internet Navigation,
340
7.2.3 The Navigation Services Market,
345
Consolidation,
345
Innovation,
347
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Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
8
INTERNET NAVIGATION: SELECTED PROSPECTS AND ISSUES
349
8.1 Technological Prospects,
349
8.1.1 Navigation Service Algorithms and Operations,
350
8.1.2 Navigation Interfaces,
351
8.1.3 Navigation to Audio and Visual Materials,
353
8.1.4 Making Greater Use of Contextual Information,
355
8.1.5 Improving Persistence,
358
8.1.6 Understanding User Behavior,
360
8.2 Institutional Issues,
361
8.2.1 Regulation,
361
8.2.2 Privacy,
364
8.2.3 Trademarks and Copyright,
365
Trademark,
366
Copyright,
368
9
THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM AND INTERNET NAVIGATION
371
APPENDIXES
A Biographies of Committee Members and Staff
377
B Speakers at Meetings and Participants at Site Visits
389
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Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation
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