<nettime> PGMedia Comments on the Failure of the NSI-Controlled DNS System

[pgp@pgmedia.net (pgMedia)]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION:
_____________________________________________

PGMedia Comments on the Failure of the NSI-Controlled DNS System



(New York, New York) The breakdown of the Internet's Domain Name
System ("DNS") yesterday, purportedly caused by human error at
Network Solutions, Inc. ("NSI") as well as NSI's antiquated
hardware, brought internet traffic to a crawl.  This and other
recent troubles that NSI has experienced in its operation of the
Internet's Domain Name System are textbook examples of a
monopolist's inertia in developing new and more secure systems
to preserve and protect the integrity of the central facilitator
of the Internet.  The end-users of the Internet demand and
deserve better.  In NSI's desire to protect its monopoly
profits, particularly in view of its stated intention to offer
public stock based on that artificially inflated cashflow, NSI
has placed the entire Internet at risk. NSI's intransigence to
the change demanded by PGMedia, Inc. d/b/a name.space in the
antitrust litigation commenced in Federal Court in New York has
also led to the recently reported investigation by the U.S.
Department of Justice for NSI's alleged antitrust violations.



PGMedia, through its name.space service
(http://namespace.pgmedia.net), has developed and implemented a
rationalized Top-Level-Domain system that allows for
registration under unlimited TLDs such as ".art" "news"
".cameras", ".inc" ".sports" and ".weather". The name.space
service is housed on a state of the art network with thirteen
root servers located in five countries. The name.space system
has been fully operational since August 1996, and was not
affected by the "human error" which ground NSI's system to a
halt yesterday. If end-users of the Internet wish to secure for
their own use, and at no cost, a far more reliable DNS system,
all they need do is access the above-referenced URL and follow
the simple steps therein to redirect their default TCP name
server addresses to the name.space network.



In addition, PGMedia believes that the name.space shared product
and service oriented TLDs, when fully resolvable, will open up
the Internet to far greater commercialization and render the
wealth of information on the Internet far more accessible to the
end-user.  PGMedia's demand for access to the central root zone
file exclusively controlled by NSI which would render PGMedia's
TLD's and the domain names registered thereunder universally
resolvable is currently pending consideration by The Honorable
Robert P. Patterson, Jr., U.S.D.J., in Federal Court in New
York. PGMedia also wishes to stress that it has no affiliation
with and does not support the anticompetitive approach
propounded by the loose group of purported registrars known as
"eDNS."



For more information, please contact the PGMedia, Inc. legal
counsel at mjd@pgmedia.net; the Amended Complaint in the
above-referenced Federal Antitrust Action may be viewed and
downloaded at http://namespace.pgmedia.net/law


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