DOJ, ICANN accused of collusion
A leading Congressman criticizes officials for discussing an ongoing antitrust investigation into Network Solutions.
Rep. Tom Bliley (R-Virginia) leveled his charges in letters sent to Attorney General Janet Reno and Esther Dyson, interim chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is the agency assuming administration of top-level domain names ending in ".com," ".net," and ".org" from NSI, the current government contractor running the bulk of the domain naming system.
Bliley, chair of the powerful House Commerce Committee, first raised the matter at a hearing called last week to explore whether ICANN has exceeded its limited authority in taking control of the domain name system. Members introduced an email in which ICANN attorney Joe Sims recounted a conversation he had with a senior Justice Department official in charge of the ongoing investigation into NSI.
According to portions of the March 1999 email, the two discussed ways to "increase the level of pressure" on Commerce Department officials negotiating a key contract between NSI and the competing domain registrars slated to use NSI's domain registration software. They also discussed "how desirable it would be to get control of the root [server] away from NSI," Bliley wrote in one of the letters today. The root server is the master database that routes traffic on the Internet.
The conversations between ICANN and Justice appear to be "highly inappropriate," Bliley wrote to both Dyson and Reno, surmising that ICANN appeared to be making an end run around Commerce, which authorized the nonprofit agency to phase out NSI's cooperative agreement with the government, which gave the company exclusive rights to register top-level domain names.
He also took Justice Department officials to task for "discussing an open enforcement matter with ICANN, a party with a decided interest in that case," noting that shortly after Sims' conversation with the official, the agency broadened its investigation into NSI.
Separately, Bliley also sent letters to officials at the Commerce Department and NSI concerning the latter's plans to launch its "Dot Com Directory."
Commerce Department officials were not available for comment.