Academic-Technology Group Offers
to Oversee '.edu' Domain on Internet
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
The academic-technology group EDUCOM has offered to become the gatekeeper for Internet addresses ending in ".edu" -- those reserved for four-year colleges and universities in the United States.
Internet addresses are now overseen by the National Science Foundation, which has contracted the job to Network Solutions Inc. That company charges about $50 a year to register and maintain each address. But the company's agreement expires in March, and the science foundation would like to get out of the Internet name game.
Several companies have been vying for the lucrative right to assign the addresses. Corporations are the biggest purchasers of the electronic properties, and they often buy addresses for each of their products. Many film studios, for example, register the name of each movie so that fans can easily find promotional World-Wide Web sites (animalhouse.com, for one). The rush for names has caused more than a few tussles over who can own certain popular addresses, although such disputes rarely involve ".edu" addresses.
EDUCOM's president, Robert C. Heterick, Jr., said in an interview Wednesday that because colleges have different needs than businesses, they should be dealt with separately. He said EDUCOM would be willing to assign ".edu" addresses and to maintain the master list permanently -- at no charge -- as a service to higher education. EDUCOM is a consortium of about 600 colleges and universities and more than 100 technology companies.
Mr. Heterick proposed the idea in a letter to N.S.F. officials last month. So far, he has not received a reply.
"It is certainly an intriguing suggestion," said Beth Gaston, a spokeswoman for the science foundation. She said officials were discussing the idea, but she would not comment further.
Mr. Heterick said that if the N.S.F. agreed, EDUCOM could have its operation running within a matter of weeks. He said the group would appoint a "blue-ribbon panel" of college presidents and chief information officers to determine whether applicants met the requirements for holding an ".edu" address. An EDUCOM staff member would do the technical work.
The change would most likely bring greater oversight for ".edu" addresses. Although guidelines cover who can receive the addresses, a spokesman for Network Solutions said recently that the system was self-policing and that, as a practical matter, ".edu" was given to any institution that asked for it.
That system has allowed some institutions to use ".edu" in their addresses even though they are not accredited by agencies that are recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. One example is the University of the United States.
Mr. Heterick said that disputes over the use of names were not the reason EDUCOM had stepped forward, and he did not criticize the current system.
If the proposal were approved, EDUCOM expects its additional work would be minimal, because most colleges and universities have already registered their addresses. "We wouldn't be doing this if we were going to be getting 500 requests per week," said Mr. Heterick. "We wouldn't see more than a few requests a week at the most."
The address system on the Internet is divided into six major areas, or domains: ".com" for businesses, ".edu" for educational institutions, ".gov" for government groups, ".mil" for the military, ".net" for networks, and ".org" for non-profit organizations. Two-year colleges in the United States and overseas institutions end their addresses with a two-letter abbreviation indicating the country in which they are located.
Background story from The Chronicle:
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