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For Immediate Release
April 29, 2002 -- Today CDT, along with Common Cause and the Media Access Project, wrote to members of Congress expressing grave concerns about the .us Internet domain.
Last week, unbeknownst to most Americans, a major "sell-off" was held for domain names in .us. Thousands of names - many of which are of significant public interest - were sold off based on flawed policies developed with almost no public input or public accountability. As a result, many valuable names like churches.us, yellowstone.us, freespeech.us, or art.us are now owned by private speculators. Thousands of others have been arbitrarily reserved for undisclosed purposes; for example, georgewbush.us is reserved, while tomdaschle.us is not.
Pursuant to the redelegation of .us, policies about this uniquely American resource were supposed to be made in the public's interest, with consultation of the affected American Internet community. That promise has not been kept. A "Policy Advisory Council" formed by NeuStar was only announced last week, has failed to approve any of these policies, and is skewed to under- represent consumer interests.
CDT, Common Cause, and MAP are calling on Congress to hold oversight hearings investigating the public's interest interest in .us and its management by NeuStar and the Department of Commerce.
For additional information about CDT's work in domain names policy, see http://www.cdt.org/dns/.
CONTACT: Alan Davidson, 202-637-9800, abd@cdt.org
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The Center For Democracy & Technology |