Iperdome Asks GAO to Expand Investigation into ICANN

[Jay Fenello]

Iperdome Asks GAO to Expand Investigation into ICANN

Atlanta, April 24, 2000 /PRNewswire/ -- Iperdome, Inc.
(www.iperdome.com), the company founded to offer Personal Domain
Name Services under the .per (SM) brand and Top Level Domain (TLD),
today announced that it is calling on the U.S. Government's General
Accounting Office to expand its investigation into ICANN.

Iperdome alleges that the Commerce Department has been negligent in
its mission to promote "job creation, economic growth, sustainable
development and improved living standards for all Americans," as
well as its mission to promote "U.S. competitiveness in the global
marketplace by strengthening and safeguarding the nation's economic
infrastructure."

Instead, the Commerce Department's actions have severely damaged
the domestic registry industry, destabilized the existing DNS system,
and created a secretive and unaccountable global governing body for
the Internet.

Iperdome was formed back in January, 1997, and quickly joined with
a handful of other companies to form eDNS, a free market attempt to
expand the name space. 

Unfortunately, through years of delays, broken promises, and
suspicious Commerce Department activities, eDNS and most of its
companies have ceased or suspended operations.  And instead of a
vibrant, competitive, inexpensive name space that eDNS would have
provided, we now have an unstable, expensive, and constrained one.  

Iperdome testified to Congress as a representative of this industry
back in June, 1998 (www.iperdome.com/responses/testimony.htm), and
warned of the importance of this process as well as some dangerous
trends.  Unfortunately, it is only the dangerous trends which have
continued. 

It is time for the U.S. Government to acknowledge this fact, and
fix it, before it's too late.  And it's up to the GAO to make it
happen, as no other part of the federal government seems willing
or able to do so. 

Iperdome suspended operations in September, 1999, after ICANN
president Mike Roberts admitted that ICANN would never allow a
registry like Iperdome to exist.

The General Accounting Office is the investigative arm of
Congress, with a mission to help oversee federal programs and
operations, and to assure accountability to the American people. 
The GAO's investigation is being led by Ed Warner, and was
authorized by Congress in Conference Report #106479.  It is
expected by June, 2000. 

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Respectfully,

Jay Fenello,

New Media Strategies

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http://www.fenello.com  770-392-9480

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