AlterNIC founder caught fiddling with Net traffic

> Eugene Kashpureff, founder of alternative internet name registry AlterNIC, came close to being released on bail from a Canadian prison this week, but is still awaiting extradition to the US.

Two weeks ago, Kashpureff was arrested in Toronto, where he admitted having rerouted internet traffic from the Web page of official domain name registrar, InterNIC, to his Alter-NIC site in protest against InterNIC's monopoly in assigning .com .org and .net domains.

Although Kashpureff's bail was set for $10,000 at a deportation hearing last week, US authorities requested his extradition. This meant he could no longer be released on bail.

InterNIC was awarded the exclusive right to assign internet domain names from the National Science Foundation, but this has come under increasing criticism from the rest of the industry.

During August, six UK companies lost connectivity functions for 48 hours when Inter-NIC deleted their domain names without warning. The problem was heightened the following week when Inter-NIC's random deletion of internet addresses struck off more UK domains.

InterNIC claimed that mistakes could easily happen, especially while administering nearly one and a half million names, but that companies would automatically be deleted if bills were not paid on time.