Tiff over Chinese domains likely to split the Net

The struggle pits VeriSign Inc.–the US company that keeps track of addresses with those well-known endings like ".com" and ".org" – against the Chinese government.

The issue: Who has the right to register Chinese-language Internet addresses?

Last month, VeriSign announced it would begin accepting web addresses written in Chinese as well as Japanese and Korean.

The China Internet Network Information Center, the government agency that oversees the registry in China, quickly responded by unveiling a competing system. Officials quoted in state-run media called the system China’s sole legal cyber-registry.

State-run newspapers, ever given to nationalistic passions, stoked the controversy. They proclaimed that the Chinese language belonged to China and that VeriSign was trampling on Chinese sovereignty.

There was even talk in the press of blocking access in China to addresses using VeriSign’s system, as Beijing does now for websites of some foreign media and critics of communist rule.

That raised the prospect of China cutting itself off from the rest of cyberspace.

“This could confuse or even fracture the Internet,” said Bjorn Stabell, technology director at Beijing-based Web Technology Solutions, a consulting firm.

Here’s the rub: The Chinese government’s system threatens to use the same domain names as one of VeriSign’s partners, a Singapore-based start-up called I-DNS.net. That means users in different geographical locations who type in the exact same address might be led to different web sites.

That would occur if the computers on the Internet that direct traffic–they are called domain name servers and they are everywhere–begin disagreeing on the individual numerical Internet addresses associated with each name. China could have its computers point to one set of servers, while the rest of the world uses another.

The US Government has historically been the ultimate arbiter, but it is trying to wean itself of that role. It designated th Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in 1998 to oversee the Net’s addressing system, but the US Group’s jurisdiction and scope still aren’t clear.

As the Net’s importance grows in everything from commerce to political expression, the world’s governments are getting more involved. But China is upping the ante by claiming the right to govern Web use in an entire language, regardless of where the users or sites are based.

“Chinese domain names are a matter of China’s sovereign rights,” proclaimed a state media report posted on the China Internet Network Information Center’s Web site (Agency officials refused interview requests).

There is room for compromise, however. The rivals are talking about how to make their systems compatible and some technical hurdles must be overcome, anyway, before non-English domain names can be used.