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The Battle over Internet Domain Names—Global or National TLDs?
Abstract
The paper examines the global controversy over Internet domain names, specifically the choice between top-level domain (TLD) names based on country codes and top-level domain names based on generic terms. The paper describes the historical background of the existing TLD naming scheme and the breakdown in the principles and procedures used to ration domain names. It develops a critique of national TLD names and an argument for expanding the number of global TLDs. Global TLDs are more useful semantically, permit more room for price competition and service innovation, and are more suited to non-territorial basis of Internet communication. More generally, they foster a regime of free international trade in Internet-related services.
... One of the largest markets for locations in spaces beyond the traditional coordinate systems, is the market for Internet domain name registrations. Domain names map natural language character strings, which can be easily memorized by humans, to technical network addresses on the Internet, which tend to be hard to recall. 2 Strictly speaking, they are just pointers to data and online services, but effectively they provide locations that enable humans to navigate the web (Mueller 1998). ...
... At first sight, the seemingly unlimited 3 number of domains that still can be registered against a low and exogenously determined registration fee appears to be at odds with 2 For a primer on domain names see Mueller (1998) or Moss and Townsend (1997). 3 The Internet standard RFC 1035 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035) ...
... The introduction of new global top level domains has the potential to serve some of the demand not met by the current domain extensions (additional benefits of more competition in TLD space, like technical innovation, lower prices, joint marketing efforts and overall more choice for consumers have been described by Mueller [1998] and others). It is too early to tell whether the new space will be accepted as a viable alternative to the established space. ...
Cyberspace is no different from traditional cities, at least in economic terms. Urban economics governs the creation of new space on the Internet and explains location choices and price gradients in virtual space. This study explores registration dynamics in the largest primary market for virtual space: Internet domain names. After developing a framework for domain registrations, it empirically tests whether domain registrations are constrained by the depletion of unregistered high quality domain names. Estimations based on registrations of COM domain names suggest that the number of domains expands substantially slower than the growth in overall demand for domain space. Supplying alternative domain extensions can relax the shortage in domains in the short term.
... Most of the people involved at that time didn't think the country codes would be used for much ' (Wall Street Journal, 1997). In fact, within a short amount of time, the gTLDs came to be perceived internationally as US TLDs (hardly surprising given both their history and the fact that two out of the seven gTLDs were reserved for United States government entities), and registrants in countries around the world (except for the United States) flocked to their ccTLDs (Mueller, 1998). Although gTLDs remain the most popular on the internet (as of , almost 90 percent of all registered domain names had a .com, ...
... However, there is disagreement about the extent to which the naming system reproduces United States hegemony. Mitchell et al. (1997: 262) write that the use of gTLDs in the United States and ccTLDs elsewhere is merely an 'historical anachronism', and similar positions are taken by Abbate (1999), Mueller (1998), and Wilson (2001). These authors note that when the internet began, practically all institutions with a web presence were located in the United States, so there was no need to use the US ccTLD. ...
... Despite these apparently innocent origins, outside the United States the tendency for American firms to use .com rather than the US ccTLD is seen as arrogant (Mueller, 1998;Shaw, 1997), and it appears that there is no consensus as yet as to whether .com signifies a 'global' or an 'American' presence. ...
The internet has evolved to have a complex top-level domain name system, in which generic top-level domains such as .com and .org coexist with country-code top-level domains such as .UK and .JP. In this article, the history and significance of this hybrid naming system is examined, with specific attention directed to the manner in which it simultaneously reproduces claims to globalism, state sovereignty, and the presumption of United States hegemony. It is found that the domain name system affirms the centrality of the sovereign state while concurrently challenging its underlying basis in an idealized nexus of nation, government, and territory. These themes are explored through case studies of two Pacific island microstate domains: .PN (Pitcairn Island) and .NU (Niue).
... The Domain Name System (DNS) translates numerical IP addresses (e.g., 128.97.27.37) into domain names (e.g., www.ucla.edu). In this way, domain names not only serve as a mnemonic interface between humans and machines, but also provide a more persistent identifier, as IP addresses might change internally while keeping the domain name invariable for final users (Mueller, 1998). ...
... http: //www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20000321.NCwgc-report.html The creation of new global top-level domains resulted in arguments both for and against (Mueller, 1998;Halvorson et al., 2012;Smith III, 2013;Mahler, 2019). On the one hand, the resolution of name conflict problems, the global competition in Internet-related services, the creation of second-level domain names that were more responsive to user demands, or new opportunities for entities that had been shut out under the previous name structure were received as positive points. ...
Top-level domains, in addition to fulfilling the technical function of enabling access to network resources, allow information professionals in general, and content managers in particular, to work with domain names for branding and search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Likewise, they facilitate the performance of metric analyses thanks to their hierarchical structure. The massive creation of new TLDs that was started in the early 21st century by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened the possibility of being able to select (or even register) a wide variety of web domains. However, the sources of information about TLDs as well as their management and usefulness for both the commercial sector (SEO, web content management, and digital analytics) and scholarly community (webometrics) are not well known among information professionals. The objective of this text is to explain the meaning and function of TLDs, to highlight their different categories, and to show their evolution over time, in order to provide useful information for professionals dedicated to the generation, dissemination, storage/retrieval, and analysis of online content.
... Department type reflects the survey design and includes Mayor's office, community development, parks and recreation, finance, and police. At the individual level, we use the Pew Research Centre's generational categories: Millennial (1981-1998), Generation X (1965-1980), Baby Boomer (1946-1964), and Silent Generation (1928-1945. ...
... domain from the GSA 3 . DNS variation might also reflect differences in how city governments view themselves and the image they want to create in the minds of users (Mueller 1998). Adopting a .com ...
There is continuous pressure on public managers to adopt information and communication technologies (ICTs) to transform the way cities work. E-government research provides insights on the institutional, organisational, and individual factors that shape technology adoption and use. Yet most studies on small and medium sized cities use cross-sectional data or rely on small samples. We lack a systematic understanding of how technology use in smaller cities has changed over time and where these cities are lagging. Drawing from a multi-year, multi-method national study of city government technology use, we describe advancements and gaps in the enactment of a range of technologies, from social media to open data portals, and explore variation across city population, department type, and manager age. Our findings show that smaller cities still lag in the adoption of key features while local government managers are more inclined to adopt and positively perceive social media than traditional ICTs.
... Currently considered as one of the 'critical internet resources' (Mueller, 2010), ccTLDs are technically redundant since any website could be accessed by its numeric address: '[ccTLDs] are useful not because computers need them, but because they have meanings which make them easier for humans to remember' (Hrynyshyn, 2008: 757). Because countries are represented in the DNS by two letters and no digits (unlike e.g. in the telephone system), some authors (Hrynyshyn, 2008;Mueller, 1998;Rood, 2000) consider ccTLDs as semantic signs per se. While this assumption is probably correct in the case of many ccTLDs, it is also possible that a specific set of digits possesses a very clear cultural meaning (e.g. ...
... 90210 as a signifier of 'the rich Beverly Hills lifestyle'; Wass, 2003: xv). And it is likewise possible that a set of letters carries no meaning; Mueller (1998) argues that some ccTLDs are counter-intuitive: 'Is .au Austria or Australia? ...
Focusing on daily (re)productions of national identities online, in this article, I investigate a particular country-code Top-Level Domain, .tr for Turkey. I follow Billig’s concept of ‘banal nationalism’ to argue that .tr (re)produces online Turkish national imaginations. Furthermore, I inspect the hegemonic Turkish norms of sexuality to examine what kind of Turkishness .tr (re)produces. The analyses of the policies governing the allocation process of .tr and the email interviews with the authors of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* websites in Turkey show that .tr works to (re)produce, in a banal way, queer-free notion of Turkishness online. My analysis also demonstrates that some authors of the analysed websites do not dismiss .tr as banal but refuse to use it in resistance against the Turkish national requirements embedded in the domain. More broadly, I argue for the acknowledgement of cultural structures in internet governance studies.
... uld mean standardising domain name policy for the benefit of end users. However, coupled with the questionnaire qualifier ‗in your country' observations, regarding the implications of changing domain name policies, are of value to domain name regulators and registrants. However, the value of domain name policy changes to end users is not described. Mueller (1998) examined the choice between generic TLD versus country code TLD spaces as the basis for Internet naming in the top-level. The case was made for generic TLDs at a time when multiple organisations were proposing an expanded generic TLD space. Critically, the study put forward that domain names perform their function when meaningful, and t ...
... There were more domain names registered under .au than any other country code top-level domain in 1991 – a grand total of 29 (Mueller, 1998). Some early .au ...
A domain name is a unique alphanumeric designation that facilitates reference to sets of numbers which actually locate a particular computer on the Internet. Domain names are a fundamental part of the Internet's user interface. Improving the usability of the Internet depends upon effective domain name policy. This study is intended to contribute to improvement in Internet usability for the end users of domain names. Benefits of more usable domain names include: higher sales, customer satisfaction and productivity, and reduced support costs. Domain name policies worldwide vary considerably. Consequently, end users are inconvenienced by contradictory domain name policies, diminishing the predictability of an entity's domain name, and thus decreasing usability for end users. The study objective was to develop criteria with which policy makers can evaluate their domain name policies, in order to improve the usability of domain names for end users. The main research question posed was: What are the criteria for an effective domain name policy. The research methodology included a literature review, domain name policy examination and an ethnographic narrative. The literature review found existing research examining either domain names or usability in isolation. However, research examining the intersection of the two is scarce. The existing research describes domain names as part of the web user interface. In practical terms, this is about how people use domain names to access web sites, email addresses and other Internet resources. It was established that the predictability (and thus usability) of domain names relies on effective domain name policy. The non-standardized and widely delegated process of domain name policy development leads to unpredictable and inconsistent domain names. The narrative recollection presented the researcher's inside perspective on the domain name industry, with a focus on domain name usability. The researcher provided first-hand insights into the evolution of the industry and policy development process, from Australian and international perspectives. To address the problem of poor domain name usability, a framework for domain name policy evaluation is proposed. The framework extends the current research that treats domain names as a user interface by proposing criteria which address usability concerns. The framework allows policy makers to critically assess domain name policies with end users in mind. Examples of the criteria include: understanding who are its intended and untended users, and whether it's consistent with other domain names. The framework has the potential to set an international standard for the critical evaluation of domain name policy, and become the basis for further research. This study was developed from the researcher's perspective as a participant in the domain name industry. A secondary lens regarding the usability of domain names was then applied. This study has only scraped the surface in terms of how the research fields of domain names and usability may be considered together. The research methodology for this study was primarily qualitative and interpretive. A quantitative study of domain name policies globally could provide further insight into areas including: the differences in second level country code domain names, and language implications of domain names.
... There are publications indicating the commercial significance of words and their meanings in the context of domain names (Lindenthal 2014), (Lindenthal 2016). Effective marketing in search engine results depends at least in part on domain names (Mueller 1998). It has been shown that in about a quarter of all cases the domain name itself influences the click through rate of a search result (Ieong et al. 2012). ...
As connected devices multiply and the internet matures into a ubiquitous platform for exchange and communication, the question of what makes a domain name valuable is ever more significant. Due to the scarcity of meaningful vocabulary and the persistence of domain-related data, the buying and selling of previously owned domain names, also known as the domain aftermarket, has evolved into a billion dollar industry. Each day over a 100,000 domain names expire and become available for re-registration. Manual appraisal is impossible at such a volume; thus a method for the automated identification of valuable domain names is called for. The aim of our study was to develop a method for high throughput screening of domain names for rapid identification of the valuable ones. Five different aspects that make a domain name valuable were identified: name quality, domain authority, domain traffic, active domain age and domain health. An SVM method was developed for high throughput screening of domain names. Our method was able to identify valuable domain names with 97% accuracy for the test set and 93% for the external set and can be used for routinely screening the domain aftermarket.
... Certains auteurs plaident pour un modèle plus complexe d'encadrement des autorégulations (Brousseau), tandis que d'autres estiment que c'est la conception «! impensée! » d'ICANN qui crée des problèmes de légitimité là où se pose seulement des questions de coordination (Mueller, 1998). ...
Rapport de recherche de l'Action Spécifique 54 du CNRS-STIC
... domain is more popular than other domains and that it may thus provide a more effective channel than the .ir domain for promoting a business (Mueller, 1998). The content analysis of each website found that existing hotels use websites primarily to introduce their business. ...
... The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private, not-forprofit, self-regulatory body, in 1999 assumed global governance responsibility for the critical technical and organisational resources required to regulate the DNS as a result of an at times fractious process of political-economic negotiation dominated by US commercial, technical and political interests (see Mueller 2004). Unusually for a global governance body, states were excluded from the decision-making process of ICANN, instead given only an advisory role its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). ...
Much academic work on governance in recent years has explored responses that states have made to sectors of the economy, usually historically well rooted nationally, that have been subject to globalizing pressures. Less work exists on responses that are being made to new parts of the economy emerging outside the nation state with inherently global characteristics. The Internet—and specifically its naming and addressing system—provides an example of how the state has aimed to assert public interest governance authority in a system initially absent of its influence. This article explores the nature and consequences of this activity in the process contributing to the study of the Internet and governance. Working within the limitations but also the opportunities created by policy norms developed at the global level, the article finds that the state has been instrumental in the development of novel public–private governance systems for Internet country code Top-Level Domains.
... Exclusive domains often trade for six-digit USD amounts and some for even more. 1 For an introduction to domain names, see Mueller (1998). ...
We investigate price finding of buyers and sellers of Internet domains. We develop a hedonic model for domain prices, controlling for differences in domain quality along multiple dimensions and test the model empirically on a large dataset of domain transactions observed at secondary domain markets. We document differences in the implicit prices for selected domain attributes across different types of buyers: domain developers, who subsequently launch websites on the purchased domains, price differently from domain investors. We find no evidence of sellers being able to discriminate between the different buyer types.
... Thus, domains constitute a lower bound as any registrant is unquestionably an ICT adopter. Additionally, every domain name is uniquely associated to a registrant whose geographical location and nature are unambiguously recorded in the databases of the organisations that manage the different ccTLD (Mueller, 1998;Grubesic, 2002). ...
Several empirical studies highlight severe disparities among geographical areas in the diffusion of ICT that affect not only developed vs. developing countries (Global Digital Divide) but also regions within the same country (Local Digital Divide). Economic scholars have investigated the determinants of these disparities but comprehensive conclusions are far to be reached. This paper contributes to the literature by modelling the level of ICT diffusion at the Italian regional level (NUT3) using spatial econometric techniques. Namely, two main research questions are addressed: (i) do Italian regions exhibit significant differences in their patterns of ICT diffusion? (ii) if so, how local structural specificities interact with spatial effects in explaining these disparities? According to recent approaches in the metrics of ICT, the empirical analysis uses domain name registrations by firms in 2001 as a proxy of ICT diffusion at the local level. The results show that sectoral composition, technological endowment and absorptive capacity at the regional level, as well as firms' characteristics, do play a crucial role. In addition, pure spatial effects contribute to regional disparities.
... During the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a not-for-profit corporation based in California with the task to establish an institution for selfgovernance in the design and management of Internet Protocol Addresses, Domain Names and Protocol Numbers – a series of very interesting subjects has been put on the policy agenda; 1. The view that identifier plans are scarce resources has been challenged; 2. It is also questioned whether national subdivision of identifier spaces is still appropriate (Mueller, 1998); 3. The notion that direct governmental involvement is necessary to safeguard a balance between various interests is put in another light by the drive for Internet self-governance. ...
Identifiers on electronic networks such as telephone numbers, domain names, IP-addresses and e-mail addresses are not only necessary components of information and communication technology (ICT) applications, but they have also become a new kind of information good that can be traded separately. Identifiers on electronic networks cannot be treated with standard information goods theory; they have very different economic and technical characteristics. The main characteristics are excludability, network externalities and the lack of scale advantages in the daily operations of an identifier system. The excludability of identifiers has brought extensive public debate on ownership questions, especially for mnemonic identifiers that resemble trademark names. Network externality effects and the technical remedies to reduce operational scaling disadvantages as much as possible, have resulted in the appearance of centralised co-ordination or monopolistic control of identifier systems and as a consequence a series of governance questions. A survey on various existing identifier systems is presented after an introduction on the economic and technical characteristics of identifiers. The survey shows a large variety of institutional arrangements and market structures for assigning identifiers on electronic networks. Data analysis of Domain Name registration statistics show substantial effects of policy reform on the growth in registered Domain Names.
... Another source of stress arose from entrepreneurs wishing to compete with NSI's monopoly: They began proposing alternate name spaces, new TLDs (e.g., .web), and independent registries (Mueller, 1998). This threatened to fragment the name space. ...
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created in 1998 to perform technical coordination of the Internet. ICANN also lays the foundations for governance, creating capabilities for promulgating and enforcing global regu- lations on Internet use. ICANN leverages the capabilities in the In- ternet domain name system (DNS) to implement four mechanisms of governance: authority, law, sanctions, and jurisdictions. These governance-related features are embodied in seemingly technical features of ICANN's institutional design. Recognition of ICANN's governance mechanisms allows us to better understand the Inter- net's emerging regulatory regime.
... Institutionellen Ökonomie. Er entwickelte seinen Ansatz in einer Reihe von viel beachteten Artikeln weiter (Mueller 1999c;Mueller 2000b;Mueller 1999d;Mueller 1998), bis er sie im Sommer 2002 schliesslich in Buchform zusammenfasste (Leib 2002:277). ...
Diss. phil. I Zürich (kein Austausch). Literaturverz.
... Thus, domains constitute a lower bound as any registrant is unquestionably an ICT adopter. Additionally, every domain name is uniquely associated to a registrant whose geographical location and nature are unambiguously recorded in the databases of the organisations that manage the different ccTLD (Mueller, 1998; Grubesic, 2002). The availability of information at the sub-national level makes domains a valid metric to explore the territorial dimension of ICT adoption while data on the nature of the registrants allow to take into account different adoption determinants for different population of potential adopters. ...
The notion that Information and Communication Technology would have reduced the economic importance of geographic distance has been proposed with energy in the post-Internet literature (Cairncross, 2001). According to this view, the New Economy would work in a space rather than a place, cost of transport would be drastically reduced, distance would be less important, and peripheral regions would benefit from opportunities that were not available in the economy based on manufacturing industry (Negroponte, 1995; Cairncross, 1997; Kelly, 1998; Compaine, 2001). Since ICT are mostly based on immaterial and human capital investment, regions or areas that have historically suffered from isolation, large cost of transportation, or lack of physical private and public infrastructure might find new paths for growth. Consequently, according to this view, the concentration of income opportunities and wealth should decrease over time. Although other predictions were also present in the debate over the impact of the digital economy (e.g. Norris, 2001; UNDP; 2001), this view was largely dominant. The reality is not so rosy. Not only there are huge disparities in the intensity with which ICT are adopted and used across countries, but also there are still large differences within industrialized countries. Indeed, differences in economic development still shape the rate of the adoption of these technologies, at the firm, regional and country level. The reasons behind these stylized facts have been investigated at length in recent times. This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it focuses on intra-national or regional differences, which is a much less explored dimension of the digital divide. Second, it uses a new metric for the adoption of ICT, namely the number of second level Internet domain names, registered under the ccTLD “.it.”. Finally, it explicitly combines the analysis of determinants with a spatial econometric approach. Thanks to the availability of panel data for both the dependent and the explanatory variables (time period: 1990-2001), spatial and temporal effect are simultaneously taken into account. Panel data techniques that account for temporal correlations are in widespread use while there have been a variety of studies accounting for spatial autocorrelation (see for instance Coughlin et al. 2003; Dubin, 1992; McMillan, 2004). However one of the major drawbacks to many analyses is that they fail to integrate the spatial and temporal correlations that are present in geographical systems (Elhorst, 2003).
In this article, I ask that culture be properly recognized as transnational, with all the implications of transnationalism, including cultural mobility as well as cultural imperialism and colonial legacies. I first establish that we all have culture and that the culture we all have is always already transnational. In particular, I call for the contextual specificity of the dominant culture to be acknowledged and scrutinized, as well as for all cultures to be thought of as provisional assemblages of multiple and entangled scales that co-create each other. I then offer some methodological, ethical, and political propositions to advance a truly transnational cultural studies, including radically contextualizing culture, employing comparative research, and de-westernizing academia. In conclusion, I ask for a radical mainstreaming of transnationalism in cultural studies; a universal recognition of culture as transnational and a universal engagement with a transnational sense of place in the studies of culture.
Internationalized domain names (IDNs) are abused to create domain names that are visually similar to those of legitimate/popular brands. In this work, we systematize such domain names, which we call deceptive IDNs, and analyze the risks associated with them. In particular, we propose a new system called DomainScouter to detect various deceptive IDNs and calculate a deceptive IDN score, a new metric indicating the number of users that are likely to be misled by a deceptive IDN. We perform a comprehensive measurement study on the identified deceptive IDNs using over 4.4 million registered IDNs under 570 top-level domains (TLDs). The measurement results demonstrate that there are many previously unexplored deceptive IDNs targeting non-English brands or combining other domain squatting methods. Furthermore, we conduct online surveys to examine and highlight vulnerabilities in user perceptions when encountering such IDNs. Finally, we discuss the practical countermeasures that stakeholders can take against deceptive IDNs.
The English language is the most dominant language in the Western world and its influence can be noticed in every aspect of human communication. It’s increasing diffusion, especially since the turn of the century, is hard to measure with conventional means. The present research studies the use of language in websites of European Union (EU) member states, in order to collect data about the prevalence of the English language in the different countries and regions of the European Union. To achieve a realistic representation of today’s landscape of the European Web, this study uses a vast population of websites and a representative sampling size and methodology. By analyzing and processing the findings from over 100,000 websites from every country in the EU, a solid foundation is set that is used to explore the dominance of the English language in the European World Wide Web in general. This is the first study that examines the presence of English content in the websites of all EU member countries and provides statistical evidence regarding the ratio of English content availability for each country. Conclusively, the results of the research demonstrate that the English language is available on more than one quarter of all websites of non-English speaking EU member states. Moreover, it is available in the vast majority of multilingual and bilingual websites, while at the same time being the only language that is available in a number of monolingual websites. In addition, it is shown preference over the national language in a significant number of cases. A moderate negative correlation is found between a member state’s population and the availability of English in these countries’ websites and the same holds true for a member state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both these correlations indicate that smaller countries tend to provide more content in English in order to establish a stronger presence in the international environment. Taking into account the role of language in the expression of national identity, this study provides data and insights which may contribute to the discussion about the changes underway in the national identity of EU member states.
Global Internet governance is unique in that it officially adopted a multi-stakeholder decision making procedure instead of a state-driven international cooperation modality. We focus on the role of the Internet epistemic community in Asia, which can explain the emergence of the current norms of Internet coordination and the Internet governance structure. By sharing the most advanced knowledge from global discussions and by organizing regional cooperation platforms starting from the early 1980s, Asian Internet technical professionals created Internet coordination norms based on open contribution and led the stewardship from the early stage of Internet development in the region. Based on a review of historical documents on the early development of the Internet in Asia, we show that the Internet epistemic community in Asia has played a critical role in designing and managing the current formation of regional Internet governance regimes, as well as their working norms starting from the early stage of Internet development in the region.
'This is an excellent book. It contributes significantly to our understanding of the telecommunications/internet boom and bust, and parts are ideal for teaching.'- John Zysman, University of California, Berkeley, US 'This accomplished research monograph breaks new ground by looking at the relationship between internet entrepreneurship and public policy. The first part charts the development of the internet as the basis for a new global network economy, and the contribution to its success of government telecoms policy in the USA, while the second part examines in detail the rise; and underlying vulnerabilities - of internet entrepreneurship in Germany, examining in close detail the character of the policy relationship between the German federal government, the incumbent national telecommunications operator and the new internet ventures. It also offers a useful comparative European chapter looking at developments in France, the Netherlands and in particular Sweden. Analytically penetrating, detailed and thorough, the book shows how national institutions (such as German corporatism) and government policies for telecommunications and for national innovation have refracted the opportunities presented by global networks, causing internet businesses to develop along unique, national trajectories. Theoretically informed and grounded in careful empirical research, the book makes for compelling reading for anyone interested in public policies for the communications revolution and the new network economy.'- Peter Humphreys, University of Manchester, UK.
A. Introduction This paper examines the property rights conflicts over Internet domain names that emerged as the Internet was commercialized and privatized. The events are interesting because they are exemplars of institutional innovation on an international scale catalyzed by technological change. The study draws on concepts of institutional change developed by North [1990, 1993] and empirical literature on the economics of property rights (e.g., O STROM [1990]; LIBECAP [1989]). The general framework of the new institutionalist economics (NIE) is used to organize and illuminate a narrative about how the commercialization of Internet domain names led to the formation of a new international regime for regulation and dispute resolution. The empirical evidence derived from the narrative is in turn used to gain a critical perspective on the theory. In this case, the driver of institutional innovation is technology's ability to create new forms of value. Innovation emerges out of conflicts in the definition or establishment of property rights in a new resource. As a counterpoint to the gradual and incremental model of change emphasized by the NIE, the example of the Internet argues that technology's ability to create new resources can serve as the catalyst of fairly rapid and disruptive institutional change. It also corroborates LIBECAP'S [1989] findings about how profoundly the path of institutional change is affected by conflicts over the distributional issues inherent in the definition of property rights. The first section discusses the NIE literature on institutional change and its treatment of technology. Section 2 outlines a conceptual framework that attempts to identify the conditions under which technological change leads to institutional innovation. Section 3 provides some background information about domain names as economic and technical resources. The fourth section applies the conceptual model developed in Section 2 to a historical narrative of Internet governance.
This book examines issues of organisation in resistance movements, discussing topics including the integration of the world system, the intersection of networks with discourses of identity, and the possibility of social transformation. Drawing on a number of theorists including Deleuze and Guattari, authors Athina Karatzogianni and Andrew Robinson seek to reinterpret World Systems Theory in order to engage with issues of power, resistance, and conflict in the contemporary world. Discussing contemporary scholarship in global politics, the authors consider new and developing concepts including: global cities, bifurcations, hegemonic transitions, the relationship between capitalism and the state, the position of East Asia, and active and reactive network movements. Their analysis includes a very rich pool of empirical examples covering more than fifty countries and thirty resistance groups. Power, Resistance and Conflict in the Contemporary World will be of interest to students and scholars looking for a comprehensive new theorization of the forces at work in global politics. The book provides a framework which crosses the boundaries between international relations, international political economy, comparative politics, conflict studies, social movement studies and critical theory, producing a study of a highly interdisciplinary scope. © 2010 Athina Karatzogianni and Andrew Robinson. All rights reserved.
The governance of economic organization and exchange across the Internet is widely recognized as being a vital part of the emerging new international networked economy. Here, the interface between the economic and the political has been brought sharply into focus as the role of government in the Internet’s future development is considered. Through examining different strands of European Union policy activity related to the Internet, this article aims to characterize and offer an explanation for the emergent patterns of governance witnessed. Whilst still at an embryonic stage, it is argued that EU policy displays, thus far, a ‘mixed mode’ of governance combining, on the one hand, acceptance of the neo-liberal model of self-regulation, with, on the other, a distinctly more interventionist ‘hands on’ policy with specific commercial and social goals in mind. Liberalizing initiatives in telecommunications and electronic commerce, as well as a self-regulatory approach to Internet content issues, contrast with actively neo-mercantilist activity in such areas as international discussions on the structure and function of ICANN and the .EU domain name regulation, where clear efforts are being made to shape the contours of the European electronic marketplace. It is suggested that EU Internet policy is characterized by negative coordination in a system in which transnational European and global regulatory networks are likely to emerge.
Within the technology-values debate, this thesis demonstrates how conscious decisions and choices concerning a particular technological artifact affect political outcomes. In this thesis, the unit of analysis will be the technology of the Internet. This document will illustrate how two values - pluralism and individualism - became reflected in this technology as a result of decisions taking place along the technology's innovation. These two values underlie American society and, in the context of the Internet's technology, they lose a degree of subjective interpretation often occurring in the physical world improving the purity of their expression. With the creation of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) these two technological values have reached a new global frontier finding their articulation in the principles of the governance body and in the regimes that formed around the technology. The prominence of these values is attributed to the technology's early epistemic community that had successfully translated its agenda into technological values based upon their occupation of the decision-making sphere regarding the technology.
The emergence of a new international regime that is being organized around the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is traced; the regime has developed in response to the commercialization of the Internet and to the global debate over the management of domain names.The property rights conflicts that arose following the growth of domain names are considered and a property regime ("draft-postel") is proposed as an efficient response to commercialization of name space.The contrast between the proposed regime and the current regime reveals the degree to which conflicts intrinsic to the definition of property rights impede institutional change. (SAA)
Registering appropriate domain names, such as Hilton.com for Hilton hotels, has become essential for companies to engage customers
on the Web. By establishing if leading hotel brands have registered trade names as domain names in generic and country domains,
this study benchmarks current industry practices. Diffusion of innovations theory helps investigate the relationship between
three — size, market sector and country of headquarters — organisational characteristics and both domain name adoption and
implementation. Findings indicate that hotels perform well in registering generic and country domains. Academically, country
of headquarters and brand size but not market sector related significantly to domain name adoption. Brand size, and to a lesser
extent country headquarters, related significantly to domain name implementation. Finally, the results showed a leapfrog effect
whereby hotels that lagged in the adoption of domain names often led in the implementation of domain names.
KeywordsDomain Names-Diffusion of Innovations-Hotel sector-Leapfrog effects
This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the use of Internet host and domain counts as indicators of the diffusion of the Internet. Based on the author's bi-annual survey of domain names and host counts provided by the Internet Software Consortium, this article provides data on the number and composition of domains by country, per capita measures of domain names, and changes in the composition of Internet hosts and domain names over time.
Many have studied the interrelations between online spaces and offline contexts, highlighting that internet spaces are fundamentally embedded within specific social, cultural and material contexts. Drawing upon a study of breast cancer patients’ computer-mediated communication (CMC), this article aims to contribute to our understanding of the role of cultural elements in shaping the participation in and design of, CMC environments. It uses an analysis of patients’ interviews and breast cancer websites as an exploratory site for identifying cultural dimensions that should be considered in studying online spaces. It shows how both the breast cancer sites and their participants emphasize a sense of global similarity and commonality, while at the same time this CMC context is shaped by specific linguistic, national, temporal, spatial, religious, ideological and discursive North-American dimensions. It concludes with a broader discussion of the importance of examining the cultural aspects of online contexts and by extension, how cultural elements shape the methodologies that researchers employ.
This metadata relates to an electronic version of an article published in Information, Communication & Society, 2004, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 50-68. Information, Communication & Society is available online at informaworldTM at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713789880 This paper argues that a neo-Gramscian perspective can provide useful explanatory insights into the recent commercialization of the Internet. Governments, notably in the USA and Europe, have taken action to shape and smooth this transition in response to the desire of business to exploit a new commercial opportunity. A series of measures has been enacted in relatively new international fora whose general aim is to promote the development of international production and trade. There is evidence of concerted efforts aimed at designing an interconnected regulatory framework within which global electronic commerce might evolve. Governmental interests have attempted to promote the ethos of a new liberalized, self-regulatory system that prioritizes commercial and trademark interests of business.
Examines the role that institutions, defined as the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, play in economic performance and how those institutions change and how a model of dynamic institutions explains the differential performance of economies through time. Institutions are separate from organizations, which are assemblages of people directed to strategically operating within institutional constraints. Institutions affect the economy by influencing, together with technology, transaction and production costs. They do this by reducing uncertainty in human interaction, albeit not always efficiently. Entrepreneurs accomplish incremental changes in institutions by perceiving opportunities to do better through altering the institutional framework of political and economic organizations. Importantly, the ability to perceive these opportunities depends on both the completeness of information and the mental constructs used to process that information. Thus, institutions and entrepreneurs stand in a symbiotic relationship where each gives feedback to the other. Neoclassical economics suggests that inefficient institutions ought to be rapidly replaced. This symbiotic relationship helps explain why this theoretical consequence is often not observed: while this relationship allows growth, it also allows inefficient institutions to persist. The author identifies changes in relative prices and prevailing ideas as the source of institutional alterations. Transaction costs, however, may keep relative price changes from being fully exploited. Transaction costs are influenced by institutions and institutional development is accordingly path-dependent. (CAR)
ITU Models and the Quest for the Internet
- A M Rutkowski
Rutkowski, A. M., ITU Models and the Quest for the Internet. Available at http://www.wia.org/pub/ITU-MoU.html.