NeuStar, the Washington, D.C.–based firm awarded the contract to operate the .us Internet domain, has named Claudette Tennant of the American Library Association’s Washington Office to the 10-member .US Policy Council. The group was formed April 24, the same day NeuStar released .us domain names for sale to the public.
The advisory council may have its work cut out for it: Within hours of .us going public, buyers registered more than 20,000 names, including firstamendment.us and nonprofit.us, alongside the thousands of .us sites previously reserved for libraries, schools, and local governments. “Here’s a public space that we just allowed to be strip-mined,” Rob Courtney of the Center for Democracy and Technology told CNN April 30.
ALA, along with the American Association of School Administrators and the National Association of Independent Schools, expressed concerns in October 2000 about commercializing .us domains to relieve the overcrowding of the .com domain. “As the Internet is privatized, the .us TLD [top-level domain] is one of the few potential levers remaining by which government can protect and advance public purposes,” the groups noted to the Department of Commerce.
Even before .us went public, Congress was considering bills to create new virtual neighborhoods whose content would be restricted. In early April, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) introduced the Family Privacy and Security Act (S.2137), which calls for a .porn domain to which all providers of material deemed harmful to minors would have to migrate. On April 10 the House Energy Commerce Committee passed the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act (H.R.3833), which would establish a .kid domain whose residents would have to demonstrate that their outside links are safe for minors.
Posted May 6, 2002.