Introduction Something important is happening. The cooperative and open processes and culture that make the Internet a public treasure have their enemies. A contest is going on now where the stakes are high. The Internet vision allows all to coexist, but the commercial vision will exclude anything but the commercial aims and will require fundamental changes in the nature of the Internet itself. The contest now being waged is over the issue of the privatizing of the Domain Name System and other central and controlling functions of the Internet.
Several documents follow.
They document the recent struggle to maintain an Internet, and to resist the commercial pressure that certain corporate interests are exerting on the U.S. government to turn these essential functions over to the private sector for its benefit. The Internet is a place where there is a diversity of networks, a diversity of computers and a diversity of users. It is a network of networks which fosters the communication among many and they benefit from this diversity. Also the Internet is based on open code and open and cooperative processes. The processes, however, that have been used by the U.S. government to create a new privatized corporation to own, control and administer Internet domain names, numbers, the root server and the protocols for the Internet have been conducted in secret and via exclusive and closed activities.