NSI hit with suit

Fri Mar 21 17:06:48 UTC 1997

>From C|Net <http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9006,00.html>:

Network Solutions hit with suit 
By Margie Wylie
March 20, 1997, 3:45 p.m. PT 

[...]

PGP Media this morning filed a suit in a New York court alleging that the
partially government-funded Network Solutions has conspired with several
other Internet groups to set up artificial barriers to competition in the
selling of Internet domain names and maintain monopoly control of the
market. The International Ad Hoc Committee, the Internet Assigned Names
Authority (IANA) and its director, Jon Postel, the Internet Society (ISOC),
and unnamed "control persons" are named as "nonparty coconspirators" in the
complaint. 

According to the complaint, which has not yet been formally served on
Network Solutions, the company is using its historical control of Internet
"root servers" to preclude competition in domain name service. Root servers
are computers that act like switchboard operators, matching up familiar
network names, like "cnet.com" with the location of that Net resource, like
a Web site, email server, or gopher server. 

[...]

PGP Media's own domain naming service, called name.space, can't operate on
the Internet without access to the config file on the Internet's official
root servers. The company is asking that the court force Network Solutions
to list name.space's top-level domains, such as ".camera," in the official
root servers in addition to minimum damages of $1 million. 